A midterm imperative: Vote for Democrats
After Donald Trump, nobody’s been campaigning harder this year than former Vice President Joe Biden. And he says for good reason: “I’m sick and tired of this administration. I’m sick and tired of what’s going on. I’m sick and tired of being sick and tired, and I hope you are, too.”
Yes, Joe, I’m also sick and tired. And I’m especially sick and tired of Republicans who defend Donald Trump. Some of them may have stood up to him a couple of years ago, but since then they have all embraced him.
First, I confess. I’m a lifelong Democrat, yet always Republican-friendly. Most of my family, including parents and grandparents, were Republicans. In my memoir, “From the Left,” I admit that in college, the very first time I voted, I pulled the lever for Kenneth Keating, the incumbent Republican senator from New York, over Democratic challenger Bobby Kennedy. Later, I was chief of staff for California Republican state Sen. Peter Behr. At one time, I seriously considered switching my voter registration to Republican.
But, let’s be honest. The Republican Party we once knew no longer exists. It’s now the party of Trump. And the Republicans we once knew and admired are no longer the same. They’ve sold their heart and soul to Trump and look the other way while he tramples everything they once believed in.
It wasn’t so long ago that Republicans were fiscal conservatives. They campaigned against deficit-spending. Today, they’re the masters of it. When the Treasury Department announced that the federal deficit exploded to $779 billion in 2018, a 17 percent increase over 2017, and is expected to top $1 trillion next year, Republicans in Congress didn’t make a peep. A far cry from when Republicans demanded $1 trillion in spending cuts from President Barack Obama before agreeing to a debt ceiling increase. On deficits, Republicans totally caved in to Trump.
It wasn’t so long ago that Republicans were free-traders and against tariffs. That’s what they were known for. No longer. When President Trump slapped new tariffs on Canada, Mexico, the European Union and China, a few Republicans expressed concern, but Congress took no action to block the tariffs or prevent a trade war with China. On tariffs, Republicans totally caved in to Trump.
It wasn’t so long ago that Republicans also believed in immigration reform. After Mitt Romney’s loss to Obama in 2012, Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., warned the Republican Party they’d be in a “demographic death spiral” unless they took the lead on comprehensive immigration reform. Yet today they’ve joined Trump in an ugly, racist assault on immigrants, both legal and illegal, including ending the Dreamers program, targeting birthright citizenship and deploying thousands of troops to the border.
Oh, yeah, that’s another thing. It wasn’t so long ago that Republicans preached the judicious use of America’s military power (with the exception, of course, of George W. Bush’s war in
Iraq). But no longer. Today, they stand down while Trump proposes sending 15,000 troops to our southern border — more troops than we have fighting ISIS — to protect us against a caravan of unarmed refugee families 1,000 miles from Texas who may or may not ever reach the border someday to seek asylum. To rally Republican midterm voters, Trump’s deploying soldiers in a political stunt. And, again, Republicans simply cave in.
It wasn’t so long ago that Republicans also believed presidents should always tell the truth, should not spend too much time playing golf and should be of outstanding moral character — never, for example, paying a porn star $130,000 to keep quiet about having sex with her.
Plus, you and I remember — it wasn’t that long ago — when Ted Cruz called Trump “a pathological liar” and “utterly amoral,” when Graham called him a “race-baiting, xenophobic bigot” or when Romney called him a “fraud” and said, “his promises are as worthless as a degree from Trump University.”
Yet today all three are solid
Trumpers, as is every other leading Republican. There’s not one with any backbone.
Which leaves voters only one option Tuesday. By all means, vote. But vote only for Democrats, up and down the line, for everything from dog catcher to mayor to governor to senator. Whatever you do, don’t vote for one single Republican. They have all sold out. They are all cowards. They are all Trump’s enablers.