Still Against Trump in Suburban Philly

I once sought the Republican nomination for a Democratic-held House seat in suburban Philadelphia. I ran as a conservative alternative to an endorsed GOP candidate from the State Senate. He won, but the race was competitive enough to run again, the professionals told me.

The next run didn’t happen, largely because of unfavorable redistricting results. But thoughts of making another try stayed with me for some time before fading. If they revive, I suppose that I should ignore them, at least for the foreseeable future, because I’m a Republican who could not bring himself to vote for Donald Trump. Both times it was close – really close. It was Hillary, after all! Then, four years later, we had news reports on “mostly peaceful protests” where cities burned and cops died. And, as ever in those pre-Dobbs days, there was the judiciary to think about. So of course it was close. But now, if given another chance in 2024, I doubt it would be as close for me. My record as a non-Trump voter will remain intact. Worse, my aversion to some of the Republican Party’s other nominees appears to be growing.

Why was Trump a bridge too far? Hadn’t I, like nearly all voters over the years, held my nose and closed ranks every November behind Republican primary winners who didn’t thrill me? Yes, I had, but Trump was different. By October of 2016, it appeared to me that Trump had no meaningful grasp on right from wrong (“kill the Jihadist’s children”). Plus, he seemed like damaged goods at some deep inner level. Choosing to empower Trump with my vote would violate one of the primary rules of the ethics course I had once taught: you must not seek to accomplish good by doing what is inherently wrong. It is self-defeating. Better to put your trust someplace else. Finally, I couldn’t imagine telling my children that I had considered Trump and his behavior worthy of my vote. Trump seemed like a surefire disaster waiting to happen.

And that disaster came. It started in the early morning hours of November 4, 2020; it really gained steam on January 6, 2021; and it rages to this day, and likely will continue for some time.

So I’m feeling OK, if not great, with my selections. Abstentions, actually – for I offer no support to the party of unrestricted ninth-month abortion, ruinous criminal justice and Covid policies, elective teen sterilizations, cancel culture, and so on. But the dreary Don refuses to leave the stage. Thus, I still have no real political home.

I’ve been a partisan Republican since I first heard Ronald Reagan interviewed on 60 Minutes in 1975 when I was thirteen. But I’m not really inside the GOP’s house anymore; more like the doghouse. No amount of harm that Trump does to the party’s electoral chances seems to weaken his grip on a critical mass of primary voters. I hope and pray that his grip can be broken soon, because today’s Democrats are bad news and getting worse with each passing day – not to mention how beatable they ought to be right now, but for the continuing Trump distraction.

But it gets worse than all that. From July of 2016 to November 4, 2020, I kept quiet about the Republican Party’s new titular leader. Perhaps I had been wrong to abstain. Perhaps the  pragmatists (whose ranks included nearly everyone I had ever loved and respected) had been wiser than I in their hopes of gaining half a loaf. Furthermore, I had kept right on voting for all the other Republicans, up and down the slate each November, regardless of their level of sycophancy toward Trump. But then came the 2020 election aftermath and Trump’s destructive, evidence-free, sore-loser act; then January 6th, and a fired-up mob carrying mostly Trump flags beating and brawling with police while House and Senate members ran for their lives to a bunker. And what was the Commander in Chief’s response during these hours? Nothing. He watched TV. Trump has never offered any excuse for those three hours of executive non-action while the crisis raged.

What to do? Vote for those who still insist, out of fear or misguided belief, on praising this fantastically failed defender of our beloved republic? Support those candidates who won’t, or can’t, see that they must lead the party, and the country, away from Donald Trump? No. If this once-reliable Republican voter feels any pull to leave the doghouse, it is not to reenter the house but to venture deeper into the woods.

John Coffey is an attorney and former teacher who writes from Ardmore, PA. He previously served as staff in both the U.S. House and Senate, and once ran for the GOP nomination for a seat in Congress representing most of Pennsylvania’s Montgomery County.