Eight years ago, I created a humorous series of bumper stickers deriding both the Democratic and Republican candidates for President of the United States, those who allowed two such grossly inferior candidates for office to rise to the finals, and those who insisted that those were the only two possible choices. Four years ago, I wrote about why I decided to break precedent and vote for a major-party candidate. As before, the title of this article suggests that I may have some regrets about what I wrote then, or that some of it may need to be retracted. That will not be necessary. Based on what I knew then, I believe I made the right decision in 2020. While we all knew of Mr. Trump's bombastic personality, two failed marriages, and populist leanings, it looked as though he was heading in the right direction-- and he had appointed a large number of federal judges, including a Supreme Court justice-- most of whom are still serving today. Many of us had hoped another four years of that would start to turn the leftist ratchet toward the right again. Given what we knew then, I still hold that Trump had earned another trip to the White House. Similarly, I hold that voting against Trump in 2016 was the sensible thing to do then. He had said or done nothing to earn our vote, and the decision I made to write-in the Solidarity Party candidate was the most sensible decision in 2016. I don't have to concede error about Trump in 2016 or 2020 to conclude that he is the wrong decision for 2024; I could only decide then based on the information available to me at the time. Today, I can decide based on the information I have now-- and I'm about to update the bumper sticker page. Sad to say, that will be a fairly straightforward substitution of Kamala Harris for Hillary Clinton.
As you may recall, my argument has always been to look past the current election and ask the typical job-interview question: "Where do you see yourself in five years?" It isn't just about this election, after all. It's about the next one and maybe even a few after that. The sort of candidates we vote for today will have an effect on what sort of candidates we get in the next election. The politicians do actually care about getting votes, and they will make adjustments over the next few years to try to appeal to more voters. They'll usually downplay the strategies that didn't work and highlight those that did seem to help.
Let's now review what I wrote last time. "If a statesman were President [in 2020], such a person would have given a rousing, inspirational speech to try to snap us out of our mass hypochondriac insanity, and if that didn't work, a statesman would have issued executive orders nullifying the unconstitutional executive orders issued by state and local officials and threatened them with arrest if they resisted. Instead, Trump was just concerned that he'd be able to blame the economic devastation on the governors and mayors, so he sat back and essentially did nothing." In the end, it was even worse than doing nothing-- it was Trump, not Biden, who started the ball rolling on the failed, so-called "vaccines" that needlessly claimed at least 37,000 lives, according to the CDC's own estimates; some estimates are far higher. It was Trump who started "printing" trillions of dollars to start a round of serious inflation and started handing out wasteful "stimulus" checks that wouldn't have been necessary if government and media hadn't fomented fear and panic. To compound this offense against human dignity, Trump takes credit for saving lives instead of apologizing for his error and asking forgiveness.
"[Trump] failed in his first two years to lead a repeal of Obamacare despite having a Republican majority in both houses of Congress and despite having made that a high priority. At a time when perhaps a bit of horse trading might have gotten the Affordable Care Act off the books, Trump couldn't find those skills within him and instead just walked away from the fight when he couldn't lead-- and unite-- the Republicans effectively. Here his divisive personality cost him significantly. As an outsider-- or at least that's the picture he wanted the electorate to believe of him-- he was only marginally effective in taking control of the executive branch, with high turnover and ongoing infighting among his senior staff plus many unfilled positions taking its toll." Let's not forget that-- Obamacare is still with us and still needs to be repealed.
"What is undeniably a pleasant surprise is his record on abortion, which is in fact the pre-eminent issue in this election (though, of course, other issues are also important). Trump has arguably done more to reverse the Democratic ratchet on abortion than any president since Ronald Reagan, and perhaps even more than Reagan. Since 1973, Republicans in general have paid great lip service to the pro-life movement, but rarely have they delivered-- as if they barely tolerate us. Their record has been poor at best, and their weak arguments run along the lines of "What are you going to do, vote for Democrats?"
"Trump, by contrast, has actually acted as if he cares about our votes. I can't say that about too many Republicans, who too often act as if they take us for granted." What is now an undeniably unpleasant surprise is that Trump is now acting as if he doesn't care about our votes-- in fact, he essentially has spat in the faces of pro-life voters and told them to get lost and take a hike. He has reverted to a stance worse than the typical Republican toleration of social conservatives, essentially telling us that he doesn't need our votes to get elected. We're back to less than lip service now. Maybe we need to teach him and the rest of the Republican Party a good, hard lesson.
If I could draw, I'd make a political cartoon showing a large elephant with an evil grin on its face while holding a football and looking at a tiny pro-life voter, saying, "Okay, pro-life voter. I'll hold the ball and you come running up and kick it." Why do the Charlie Browns in the pro-life movement consistently fall for this tired trick in every election? When do the Republicans actually have to deliver or suffer the consequences of not delivering? It seems as though the answer is "never." They'll always be the "lesser evil," the ratchet will keep turning further and further toward leftist evil, and the pro-life movement will go nowhere, ever.
Going back to the next election (as odd as that sounds), let's look at what may be at stake here. If after all that Trump and his henchmen have done to alienate pro-life voters, we vote for him anyway, we will certainly find ourselves in a worse position in future elections. Politicians will say, "Trump abandoned the pro-life voters, but they voted for him anyway. Why bother trying to win their votes?" This time around, I am going to suggest that we need to say "to blazes with Trump and his Democratic Lite Party. I'm voting for a real pro-life candidate."
In November, I'll be voting for Peter Sonski of the Solidarity Party. As always, this is a good time to emphasize that anyone who claims or insinuates that not voting for Trump is a sin is just plain wrong and frankly insulting. It is one thing for someone to advocate for one or another candidate, but when qualified pro-life candidates are available, any of them could be selected for good reason, and insisting that one candidate is the only choice-- especially a candidate as deplorable as Trump-- is simply wrong-headed. Finally, while voting for Trump may be a moral act, morality is a bare minimum standard, as I have consistently argued. Any number of moral acts may be downright stupid, and voting for a candidate who does not want your vote, will do nothing to earn it, and supports immoral acts such as abortion and in-vitro fertilization may qualify as a moral but nevertheless incredibly stupid act.
As the saying goes, the definition of insanity is repeatedly doing the same thing and expecting a different result. Pro-life voters who vote for Trump this year are arguably insane under that definition. People have been voting for Republicans for as long as I've been allowed to vote (over 40 years now) and, like Bullwinkle trying to pull a rabbit out of his hat, "that trick never works."