Ever since I could vote, one of the issues that mattered most to me was how America defended her allies, her fellow democracies, and those who fought tyrants in their homelands. I saw America win the Cold War – and more importantly I saw how much safer and better the rest of the world was because of it.
That made me a Republican and kept me one for 25 years. I’m also guessing there are still a number of my friends who became and stayed Republican as well for that reason.
I’m emphasizing this because Donald Trump has deliberately, pointedly, and (for him) carefully destroyed that Republican Party. In its place he rebuilt the isolationist, protectionist, America-hating GOP from the 1930s (without the pro-civil rights veneer that the prewar party maintained). It broke my heart to see it.
Yet there was a hopeful sequel to that story. The national security and democracy concerns that the Republicans dropped, the Democrats picked up. Yes, Democrats aren’t used to being the tough party. They saw the toxicity in toughness (and often, rightly so); that made the journey harder for them. But they’ve made it. They have taken up the mantle that Trump made the Republicans abandon.
For those in the non-Trump center-right like me who have not yet decided to vote for Kamala Harris, I ask you to watch her DNC acceptance speech [1] – particularly her words on foreign policy.
“As Commander-in-Chief, I will ensure America always has the strongest, most lethal fighting force in the world.”
“… as President, I will stand strong with Ukraine and our NATO allies…”
“As President, I will never waver in defense of America’s security and ideals. Because, in the enduring struggle between democracy and tyranny, I know where I stand—and where the United States of America belongs.”
These are our words. They are the words we used to justify voting Republican.
The Republicans of 2024 are no longer interested in those words, in those principles.
But the Democrats are.
This torch wasn’t passed to the Democrats. The Republicans threw it in the river and abandoned it; the Democrats have picked it up, dried it out, and lit it again.
I know there aren’t a lot of us left (most stayed in the GOP and corrupted themselves). I know how lonely and isolated it has felt to be one of us. But now we have more than the courage of despair. The Democrats are no longer merely less isolationist than the Trumpers. They are defending our allies and our fellow democracies. They are “doing the work” (as they say) in Ukraine and with NATO.
They will need our votes; they will need our help. It is time to get off the fence and give it to them.