Over the past year, as Donald Trump defied every political obituary written about him, maintained a steady presence in the opinion polls and moved from victory to victory in the Republican primaries, I have watched with some bemusement as conservative opinion leaders wrestled with the prospect of not voting for the Republican candidate for president come this November. The latest example is an article by Jay Nordlinger in the current issue of National Review. I am bemused because not voting Republican is a practice to which I reconciled myself some twenty years ago.
I come from a Republican family. Both my parents consistently voted Republican and leaned conservative. My paternal grandfather served two years as a Republican congressman from the Bronx - a most rare creature. One of my earliest memories as a child is watching Richard Nixon announce his resignation on television.
But as a teenager my circle of friends were almost exclusively progressive Democrats from progressive Democrat families. And as a teenager one invariably sides with one's friends against one's parents. So as the 1980 election approached I parroted whatever left-wing propaganda I picked up, accusing Ronald Reagan of all manner of sinister deeds, plans and attitudes.
Then in my sophomore year of high school I found myself with a free period in my schedule, which I spent in the library. In the periodical section was a magazine I had never seen or heard of before - National Review. To this day I am mystified that such a publication was ever allowed into a public school library. I was immediately drawn to it. It had an irreverent sense of humor and I found in it conservatives who defied the caricatures of conservatives that much of popular culture uncritically accepted.
Within months facts and reason persuaded me to become a conservative. I became a full-throated defender of Reagan and Reaganism. When I turned 18 I registered to vote and enthusiastically checked the Republican box for party affiliation. I voted for Reagan in 1984 and Bush in 1988 and 1992. I, like many conservatives, was disappointed with the lack of success in rolling back progressive power grabs by the federal government but I reasoned that little was possible so long as the Democrats controlled Congress.
Then in 1994, in reaction to early overreaches by Bill Clinton, the voters elected a Republican Senate and, for the first time in over 40 years, a Republican House. I thought to myself, "Now you're gonna see something." But, like the Joker at the end of The Dark Knight waiting for the two ferry boats to explode, I was disappointed.
It turns out that, for the most part, Republican politicians are just as addicted to power, and the perks that accompany it, as their Democrat counterparts. It also turns out that Republican voters may like to imagine themselves as rugged individualists but most of them are as fond of federal handouts as any welfare queen.
At this time I also began to take a deeper interest in the Constitution and I realized that much of what the federal government does is not just bad policy, it's illegal. The Constitution vests the federal government with a finite number of enumerated powers. Anything not on the list is off-limits to the Congress and left to the authority of the states.
Then, in the 1930's the Supreme Court adopted a progressive view of the Constitution that one clause, giving Congress the authority to regulate "Commerce ... among the several states," could be twisted into an almost unlimited grant of power. It was a patently absurd interpretation to any objective observer but, with a depression going on, New Dealers convinced a lot of people that greater federal power was necessary.
A lie doesn't become true simply because it's repeated over and over again for decades. And I realized that virtually every office holder who took an oath to support the Constitution was, in effect perjuring himself so long as he acquiesced to the federal power grab begun under FDR. I now saw the two major political parties as rival crime families who may despise each other, but neither one was about to give up theft.
In 1996 the Republicans nominated Bob Dole. Dole had been on one government payroll or another almost his entire life, beginning at 19 when he enlisted in the army. He was a consummate deal maker and moderate, working with Democrats to grease the wheels of government and keep the whole machine running smoothly. Newt Gingrich famously called him "the tax collector for the welfare state."
But the 1996 Bob Dole had donned the mask of a conservative. As a gimmick, during his stump speeches he would pull an index card out of his jacket pocket and read the 10th Amendment - "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people." But he had no clue what it meant. It was almost as if he were delivering the lines phonetically. But this was the Republican Party's pattern: make comforting noises to the conservatives during campaigns and then, when the balloons are dead and the confetti's swept up, go back to logrolling, empire building and doling out favors (no pun intended).
I decided somewhere along the line that I would no longer vote for someone whose first official act would be to commit perjury. I changed my registration to unaffiliated. I voted Libertarian in 1996 and 2000. After September 11 I no longer had confidence in the Libertarian party's approach to national security so I haven't cast a vote for president since then. With one exception: In 2008 I voted for John McCain because it was the only way I could think of to vote for Sarah Palin. It's a decision I have come to regret.
So this year I will not be voting for either major party candidate for president, but not for the first time. For all the #NeverTrumpers who are new to this, come on in, the water's fine.
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