For as long as I’ve been covering politics, I’ve written about why I can’t vote for Donald Trump or Vice President Kamala Harris for president.
I’ve explained the reasons endlessly, but I haven’t written much about why I believe write-in candidates are the right answer to such a hopeless election.
My write-in vote for President will be for Georgia Governor Brian Kemp. He is a successful Republican, has executive experience, and has clearly shown how to navigate the crazy world of President Trump’s Republican Party without sacrificing truth. He’s a true conservative that I can support.
However, who I vote for is not important to this conversation. The “why” I vote this way is more complex.
Republicans like Brian Kemp are the people the Republican Party should rally around.
Few Republicans who rose to prominence during the Trump administration have effectively navigated American politics. Many people have tied their careers completely to Trump. Some people opposed it and made themselves political martyrs.
Few Republicans have stood up to Trump as boldly as Brian Kemp, along with other Georgia Republican leaders, and emerged from the other side relatively unscathed.
Kemp’s stance against Trump comes in the wake of Trump’s loss in 2020, when Trump tried to pressure the Georgia Republican Party to overturn the election results that handed the state to Biden. . Mr. Trump asked Mr. Kemp to block the certification of the results, but Mr. Kemp refused because he believed the action was illegal under Georgia law. Georgia ultimately went to Biden.
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Since then, Kemp has repeatedly asserted that the election was “not stolen,” fueling Trump’s vendetta against Kemp. Despite all this, Kemp defeated his Trump-backed opponent to secure the Republican nomination for governor in 2022, and ultimately easily defeated another election denier, Stacey Abrams. He defeated him and won his second term as governor.
Mr. Trump and other MAGA Republicans have spent the past four years distracting from the functioning of the party, but Mr. Kemp, despite attacks on his name from Mr. Trump and his allies, He has effectively led the state of Georgia. As governor, Kemp signed into law significant conservative accomplishments, including bringing school choice to Georgia, protecting the lives of unborn children, and achieving the lowest unemployment rate in state history during his first term.
Instead of getting involved in the national drama, Kemp stayed in his lane and did his best to get results for his constituents, and that’s exactly the stance I can support. He is someone conservative Republicans should support.
I don’t want to choose between Trump and Harris.
I am morally unable to vote for Trump or Harris. Both pose grave dangers to our country, and we cannot trust them in power.
As a conservative, my opposition to Harris is clear. But for many Republicans like me, Trump’s character is clearly unfit for president, even if we support some of his policies more than Harris’s. Both his attempts to steal the election and rampant abuse of women are disqualifying in my eyes. They should be for all conservatives.
Therefore, I will not vote for either party’s candidate in the 2024 presidential election.
Upon hearing my words, most people reflexively think that in a binary electoral dynamic, not voting for either of the two major party candidates would be wasting my vote. That would be the reaction.
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This is true if we are choosing eternal leaders, but the fact that there are elections every four years gives value to protest votes.
The future of conservatism or liberalism does not depend on a single election, but on the trajectory of a movement over a longer period of time. A protest vote could change that trajectory by holding parties accountable for losing supporters.
Conservatives and progressives who oppose their party’s candidates have an opportunity to tell party leadership that the status quo is unacceptable. Our country deserves better candidates.
Will Republicans listen to our protest votes?
Once an election is over, massive analytical machines are turned on, with statisticians, politicians, and commentators trying to figure out why the winners won and the losers lost.
The analysis suggests that some people may have originally voted for the Republican candidate but chose not to vote for Trump due to concerns about his character.
Whether Republicans will make the right choices based on that information is another question. Regardless of the outcome of the election, I hope the Republican Party will seriously consider the votes it could garner if it broke away from Trumpism. I’m not optimistic about the future of the Republican Party, but I’d like to suggest that the Republican Party could win my vote if it would just change course and move away from Donald Trump.
What happens if Trump loses? Will he leave? He hasn’t done that yet.
Other anti-Trump conservative commentators argue that a Harris victory in November will make conservatism healthier in the long run. I have some sympathy for this argument, but it assumes that President Trump will simply step down after losing another presidential election.
Mr. Trump has given us no reason to think so. But more importantly, Republican voters have not shown that their loyalty to Trump depends on the outcome.
Trump has defeated the Republican ticket in every election since his first victory in 2016. In 2018, Republicans lost the House. In 2020, Republicans lost the president and the Senate. Republicans narrowly took back the House in 2022, but did so far short of expectations that called for a “red wave.”
Despite his clear track record of failure, Republican voters once again decided to nominate Trump as their presidential candidate for a third consecutive year. Instead of getting serious about undoing the disastrous Democratic policies of the past four years, Republicans hope to chase the same lightning bolt that Trump caught in 2016. If three disappointing election cycles presuming Trump’s defeat in November weren’t enough for voters to abandon Trump, I don’t see why a fourth would be any different.
Trump will make it easier for his supporters to rally around him again. Is anyone to think that, despite his embarrassing loss to Harris in November, Trump won’t again claim that the election was somehow “rigged”?
What happens if Trump wins? Will he leave? perhaps.
A victory would only strengthen the trend of President Trump’s conservatism, but his influence does not appear to be diminishing even if he loses the election. Do you feel MAGA has less control over the party now than it did in 2016, or even in 2020?
A win-or-lose outcome is more likely, but we will have to live with MAGA Republicans for the foreseeable future. The first step to reducing their influence is for their glorious leaders to retire from politics. If losses occur, that schedule may be extended.
A natural departure after two terms would likely break the deification that some Republicans have for Trump, while also providing a much more convenient way to switch undying support to a new candidate. It’s also a story.
Republicans have fully embraced MAGA, and that decision is likely to continue regardless of the outcome of this election. The decision to abandon pro-lifers, conservative economic policies, and conservative values was the party’s vision for the future. Righting the ship will take years, if not decades, of work ahead. The outcome of 2024 is of little importance in the trajectory of what goals we achieve.
In the end, I don’t think the future of conservatism will change much whether Trump loses or wins in 2024. The reality is that anti-Trump Republicans have a lot of work to do to take back our party, regardless of the outcome. return. That starts with supporting conservatives like Kemp.
Dace Potas is an opinion columnist for USA TODAY and a graduate of DePaul University with a degree in political science.
