3-25-25

Yesterday I made an appearance on NewsNation…..I was put on a panel with a

former Democrat Congressman…..he had a great resume, law school grad, former

Marine, but a Democrat who ran for Congress and then lost in his bid for the US

Senate……seemed like a sharp guy…..he was well spoken…..I appreciate his

military service…..but basically, I identify with some of his background but I don’t

identify at all with his policies…..and there was no way his personality was going

to win me over because I know what I believe and he doesn’t believe the same as

me therefore I would never find myself voting for him……

I hear it all the time……”I vote straight ticket”…..or “I vote for the person, not the

party”…..or the other side of that three-sided coin, “I vote for the one that has the

best policies”…….I’m going to suggest that there has to be some of all of the

above…..

I saw an article a while back about the Cheney family and their complete disdain

for President Trump…. former Vice President Dick Cheney even did a campaign ad

for his daughter, Liz Cheney, in which he declared that Trump was a

traitor……that’s some stiff words from a man who should know the value and

Import of such words……the article I read even went on to question the Cheney

family’s all out assault against Trump…..Are they Republicans? Arguably yes. Liz

Cheney and certainly Dick Cheney would fall into what is often referred to as the

establishment, or legacy wing, of the GOP……Don’t they care about conservative

policies? You would think so!.....I mean are they really of the mind that we would

have been better off under Joe Biden? Apparently so, since Liz Cheney actually

endorsed Kamala Harris…..which would have been Biden 2.0…… certainly seems

that policy has lost out to the ultimate bugaboo of Trumps personality with the

Cheney’s…….Personality…..that’s what they’re voting on?

Let’s break it down a bit……Let’s talk first about party politics…..I’m a longtime

Republican myself…..many years as a party member, a county party chairman, a

member of the State Executive Committee, and an elected Republican……for

those that vote straight ticket there are sometimes the complaints that party over

politics influenced their vote…..so what? Is that bad?....well, it depends….when

someone runs on a party ticket you have a means of knowing that they have been

(at least somewhat) pre-cleared…..they have acknowledged a party platform, they

have aligned themselves with a team…….they have not worked for the other party

in recent history, they are allegedly lined up with certain values that the party

platform espouses…..and with others on the same ticket……for instance if

someone says that they are a Democrat but they don’t align with Joe Biden then

you have to ask why they are a Democrat…….. One former State Representative

who spent years as a Democrat tried to tell me once that he really didn’t align

with the bulk of Democrats, that he even caucused at times with

Republicans…..my question to him was: “then why are you still riding for that

brand?”….there are going to be those folks who occasionally may cross-align with

party platforms…..maybe they’re for gay marriage but opposed to government

spending sprees…..or perhaps they are all for green energy agendas but also

believe in a strong national defense….but those kind of crossover voters are

getting fewer by the day……

I once spoke to a man whose daughter had unsuccessfully run for office as an

independent…..he told her afterwards as she was lamenting her heavy loss at the

polls that she should look at the numbers and realize that there was no straight

ticket vote on her side, and that every single person who voted for her literally

voted for her…..Okay, that’s true…… I’m sure that’s a way to assuage the pain of

her epic loss, but the fact remains that she ran also ran without a team…..when

you join a team you reap the benefits of being on that team….likewise you are to

some degree accountable to that team……so voting straight ticket? I have no issue

with voting straight ticket unless I can clearly see that some member of that

team’s ticket is not who he/she said they are…….

And that’s why I have to dig into policy……we all do…..what does the person stand

for….what will they do….and if they’ve been in office before then tell me what

they’ve already done….what are their policies?......I care deeply about policy…..I

can’t imagine ever voting for a Democrat myself…..but I also care about who is

claiming the mantle of being a member of either party….what are their policies?

What will they do?......yesterday on NewsNation the Democrat that I was pitted

against decided to go down the road of hating Elon Musk….he made the tired

worn out useless point that “the American people didn’t elect Elon Musk”……yes

we did! Of course we did! ……because we overwhelmingly voted for Donald

Trump who then picked a team full of people that were not on the ballot…..every

member of his cabinet, all of his Czars, his top Generals, the judicial

appointments, the members of the National Security Council, and yes, Elon

Musk…..none of them were voted on directly…..but they are an absolute

extension of the policies that the American people heard Donald Trump say that

he would promote and we cared and so we voted……Elon Musk is an extension of

policy…..plain and simple……Donald Trump won both the popular vote and the

electoral vote…..we wanted his policies….so therefore we did in fact vote for the

people he hired to put those policies in place….

the interesting thing is that during the 2020 Presidential election cycle Biden and

every member of the Democrat field told us exactly what they would do…..sure,

there were some whoppers about being a unifier and working across the

aisle….but the truth is we had 40 years of history on Joe Biden’s policies…..he

presided over the Senate for Obamacare votes as the VP…..his foreign policy was

awful…..he loathed strong military action and literally gave us ISIS as an enemy

when Obama/Biden abandoned Iraq without a plan…….Biden was known for

being a gaffe-master and embarrassing others in his circle by his inability to avoid

saying stupid stuff……but policies! Policies! The policies of a candidate are of

paramount importance……if the Cheney’s ( or anyone else for that matter)

thought for a minute that Trump’s policies would have been worse than Biden’s

then I question whether they were really Republicans to begin with…….it appears

to me that the Cheney’s and other’s of the Never-Trump crowd got lost along the

way….they incubated and festered such a hatred of Trump’s personality that they

were willing to sacrifice both Party and Policy……

So let’s talk about Personality…..that brings us to those who like to say that “I

vote for the person”…..Ok, I understand that elections are in some ways a

popularity contest….especially in the primary season…..half a dozen candidates

stand in front of you, running commercials on your TV, mailing stuff to your

house…..and you find yourself getting caught up in the whole idea of which one

smiled better, or seemed more genuine, or came across too grumpy, or posted

something you didn’t like on Facebook…..Personality plays a part in every

election…..and that is not unreasonable……but it can become a trap if that is all

that a voter looks at……Personality cannot be the best indicator of whether

someone is most qualified to serve in a public office……look back at 2020…..the

Presidential election of 2020 came down largely on the question of Trump’s

personality…..I have no issue with Democrats who voted for their

candidate…..they’re Democrats…..And I get that so-called independents may have

had likes/dislikes and not being wed to a team they were flexible and went to

whatever candidate they last landed on……What I do have serious issues with are

the Never-Trump Republicans…..those so-called team players who sacrificed

everything because they said that they believed in ……every party platform, every

policy position……..all because they were so swept up in the idea that Trumps

personality was bad for the party, bad for the nation……well, how did that work

out?….. it’s as if the politics of the middle school cliques took over for some of

those longtime players and pundits……I will readily admit that Trump’s personality

is brash and at times bombastic…..occasionally I would cringe at his mean tweets

too…..so what?....in the end I would rather have a strong and sometimes rude

personality running policies that I believe in than to endure what we are enduring

now…..

Politics, Policy and Personality…….I would rank them in order of their importance

as policy first, party next…..and then maybe some of the personality….. This ain’t

middle school……

And that’s a wrap for the Rightside Way