No recommendations here on how you should vote — just a Democrat’s concern about the Republican Party’s future.
I believe Iowa’s statewide and congressional elected officials — Gov, Terry Branstad, U.S. Sens. Chuck Grassley and Joni Ernst, and members of Congress Rod Blum, David Young, and Steve King — are doing great harm to Iowa, themselves, and a future Republican Party by continuing their endorsements of Donald Trump.
The Republicans’ highest ranked official (Speaker Paul Ryan), most recent presidents (George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush), and presidential candidates (Sen. John McCain and former Gov. Mitt Romney) have refused to support Trump.
They’ve been joined by dozens of other leading Republicans — governors, U.S. senators, and representatives — who do not support him. Some think Trump should drop out. Some say they’ll vote for Hillary Clinton. Others merely say they can’t endorse or vote for him.
By mid-October, no major U.S. newspapers had endorsed Trump. Some conservative papers that have never endorsed a Democrat are supporting Clinton; others merely advise readers not to vote for Trump.
One can sympathize with Iowa’s Republican leaders. It’s not easy to reject one’s presidential nominee. But the cost of their supporting Trump far exceeds any benefit.
(1) That they supported Trump will forever be a large blot on their personal political legacy.
(2) It makes it more difficult to build a future Republican Party in Iowa and the U.S. — especially while Trump attacks Republican leaders. We need political parties engaged in civil, compromising, conversation in which differing opinions are grounded in agreed upon facts.
(3) Trump’s encouragement of divisiveness brings out the worst in us, rather than our best. Iowa’s leaders are encouraging our children’s emulation of someone who deals in ridicule and mean-spirted disparagement of women, entire races, religions and ethnicities, war heroes, people with disabilities, and Gold Star mothers.
(4) Iowans are proud of their reputation for “Iowa Nice,” their welcoming of immigrant populations from around the world, their ethical and religious values — a culture diametrically opposed to what Trump represents.
(5) Iowans, like all Americans, want our state to be well thought of by others — especially those with ill-informed biases who think we’re just backwater, flyover country. Our leaders’ support for Trump only reinforces our critics’ worst prejudices.
(6) We are trying to attract the best and the brightest to our state — faculty and students, leaders of large and small businesses, skilled workers, and the creative class. We want to retain our first-in-the-nation presidential caucuses. Other states have lost business for being far less offensive than Trump.
Iowa’s Republican officials don’t need to drop their membership in the Republican Party or announce they are voting for Clinton. They don’t need to publicly itemize the daily lengthening list of reasons Trump is unsuited to be president.
What they do need to do, for their own sake and that of their party and state, is to join the impressive ranks of responsible Republicans who have announced they are neither endorsing nor voting for Trump.
— by Nicholas Johnson
