I first voted for a Republican presidential candidate in 1964 when I was 21 and head of Youth for Goldwater at the University of New Hampshire. Since then I have voted 13 more times for every nominee of my party, including Donald Trump four years ago.
I have been a delegate to four Republican National Conventions. In the U.S. House of Representatives, I chaired the House GOP’s successful effort to get a vote on the Balanced Budget Amendment in 1990.
I have been an active, committed Republican for more than a half a century but I cannot vote for President Donald Trump on Nov. 3 for the following reasons.
In 1992, after serving as state co-chairman for Pat Buchanan, who was challenging President George H.W. Bush for the nomination, Buchanan asked me to sit on the National Platform Committee as a Buchanan delegate. We hammered out a number of changes more in keeping with conservative views than the White House wanted. But we got a platform.
Now, under Trump, for the first time in 160 years, my party doesn’t even have a current platform.
This allows him to shift with the wind over the next four years. Nothing he does can be inconsistent with the platform if there is none. It makes the party a cult of personality, not one of principles.
Trump has questioned the need for NATO, which Republican presidents since Eisenhower have supported. NATO was formed in 1949 when we were in a Cold War and Republicans strongly opposed Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev and the KGB. We knew Pravda and Radio Moscow were “fake news,” not our American press.
Today, Trump may fire Christopher Wray, director of the FBI, for honestly telling Congress recently that Russia is again meddling in our election. But Trump is not buying it. Why? Trump’s own former director of national intelligence, Dan Coats, suspects Putin “has something on Trump.”
What else explains why Trump, at Helsinki a couple of years ago, said he believed Putin over our 17 intelligence services regarding whether Russia meddled in our elections? Sen. John McCain called it “a disgraceful performance” for a president. Or is it all really about needing Putin to OK a future Trump Hotel in Moscow?
Trump lacks principles, purpose and courage, so he denigrates men of true greatness like McCain and Rep. John Lewis while fawning over brutal dictators he envies for their use of unfettered and arbitrary power. He can’t even commit to a peaceful transfer of power in November, but acts like we are Belarus.
His attitude toward Black Americans is palpably racist. As a member of the party that used to be the “Party of Lincoln,” it now feels like the first term of a George Wallace administration.
When faced with a national pandemic, Trump showed a total lack of leadership by outsourcing the solutions to mayors and governors. In March he told writer Bob Woodward, “I wanted to always play it down.” He said reluctantly this summer it is “patriotic” to wear a mask but then makes fun of Joe Biden for setting an example for us all by wearing one.
Republicans have also long fought waste, fraud and abuse in government. We helped create independent inspectors general in the Cabinet departments to be your watchdogs. Yet Trump has fired five of them when the swamps they were draining would have exposed his administration.
I had hoped in 2016 that Trump would rise to the office, but he is incapable of being anything but a daily Fox News junkie and a reality TV president. I am tired of going down the mean-spirited escalator with Trump.
With Trump you get chaos but no kindness.
We need someone with empathy, and with the goal of uniting, not dividing us. We need someone who isn’t tweeting like a teenager but talking to the people in a measured, civil and empathetic way that leads to bipartisan solutions.
So, for the first time in my 77 years, I am voting for a Democrat, Joe Biden, for president.
I don’t think political parties are like sports teams. If you support the Red Sox you don’t cheer for the Yankees. I get that. But to get my principled party back, we first have to get rid of Trump.
If I do a write-in vote, I am in effect voting for Trump.
Do I agree with all of Biden’s policies? Of course not. But I prefer a steady hand at the helm rather than a narcissist running in circles on the deck. And I prefer someone my three grandchildren can admire and respect, rather than having to always explain away the liar in chief to them.
I will split my ballot and vote Republican for the rest of the ticket because New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu is everything you would want in a real leader. And we need a New Hampshire Republican House and Senate to balance the state budget’s $300 million hole without raising taxes.
At least my old party’s principles on deficits and spending live on in New Hampshire, if not in the White House.
Join me in splitting your ballot this year for the good of the nation. As Cindy McCain said, “put your country first.”
Chuck Douglas, of Bow, is a former New Hampshire congressman from the 2nd District, Superior Court and Supreme Court judge, and a retired New Hampshire Army National Guard colonel.