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    • As a Republican, I will vote for a true conservative. Not Trump
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    As a Republican, I will vote for a true conservative. Not Trump

    Online Niel Posted on

    I don’t think the future of conservatism changes that much with a Trump loss or victory in 2024. Regardless of the outcome, anti-Trump Republicans have a lot of work to do to take our party back.

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    While I covered politics, I’ve been writing about why I can’t vote for Donald Trump or Vice President Kamala Harris for President.

    While I’ve gone on and on about why, I haven’t written as much about why I think a write-in candidate is the right answer to such a hopeless election.

    My vote for president will be for Georgia Governor Brian Kemp. He is a successful Republican with executive experience and has clearly demonstrated how to navigate the crazy world of Trump’s GOP without sacrificing the truth. He is a true conservative that I can support.

    However, who I vote for is not important to this conversation. “Why” I vote the way I do is more complex.

    A Republican like Brian Kemp is who the GOP should rally behind

    Very few Republicans who grew up in the Trump era of American politics have navigated the landscape effectively. Many have tied their own careers entirely to Trump. Others made political martyrs in opposition

    There are few Republicans who have stood up to Trump as boldly as Brian Kemp, along with other Georgia GOP officials, and are coming out the other side relatively unscathed.

    Kemp’s stance against Trump came in the wake of Trump’s 2020 loss, in which Trump tried to pressure Georgia Republicans to overturn the election results that gave the state to Biden. Trump called Kemp to block certification of the results, which was denied because Kemp believed the move was illegal under Georgia law. Georgia ultimately went to Biden.

    Opinion: I am a Republican who cannot support Trump. Instead, I’m voting for Cornel West.

    Since then, Kemp has he repeatedly stated that the election “wasn’t stolen,” adding fuel to Trump’s vendetta against him. Despite all this, Kemp defeated his Trump-endorsed opponent to secure the GOP nomination for governor in 2022 and ultimately won the governorship for a second term, handily defeating another electoral denierStacey Abrams.

    While Trump and other MAGA Republicans have spent the past four years distracting the party from any sense of functionality, Kemp has effectively led Georgia despite attacks on his name from Trump and his allies. As governor, Kemp signed major conservative accomplishments into law, establishing school choice in Georgia, protecting unborn life, and providing lowest unemployment rate in state history during his first term.

    Instead of joining the national drama, Kemp has done his best to stay the course and deliver for his constituents, which is exactly the kind of attitude I can support. He’s the kind of Republican conservatives should be rooting for.

    The choice between Trump and Harris is not one I am willing to make

    Morally, I cannot vote for Trump or Harris. Both represent a significant danger to our country and cannot be trusted with power.

    As a conservative, my opposition to Harris should be obvious. However, for many Republicans like myself, Trump’s character makes him clearly unfit for office, even if we favor some of his policies over Harris’s. His attempts to steal elections and his rampant abuse of women are both disqualifying in my eyes. It should be for all conservatives.

    So, I am not voting for either party’s candidate in the 2024 presidential race.

    When most people hear me say this, their reflexive response is that, in our binary electoral dynamic, not voting for either of the two major party candidates throws my vote away.

    Opinion: Republicans can’t stop lying for Trump. Even if it hurts.

    While this would be true if we elected a leader for eternity, the fact that we have elections every four years gives protest votes their value.

    The future of conservatism or liberalism does not depend on a single election, but rather on the trajectory of the movements over a longer period. Protest votes can alter that trajectory, forcing parties to account for the loss of supporters.

    Conservatives and progressives who oppose their party’s candidate have an opportunity to tell the party leadership that the status quo is not acceptable. Our country deserves better candidates.

    Will the GOP listen to our protest votes?

    After the election, a massive analysis machine will start, with statisticians, politicians and commentators trying to figure out why the winners won and why the losers lost.

    In that analysis, there will be people who voted the Republican candidates down, but chose not to vote for Trump from their concerns for his character.

    Whether or not the GOP makes the right choices with this information is another question. I hope that regardless of the outcome of the election, the GOP takes a hard look at the votes that could be won by breaking away from Trumpism. I’m not optimistic about the future of the Republican Party, but I hope to give them the indication that my vote can be earned if they simply correct their course away from Donald Trump.

    What if Trump loses? Will he leave? He hasn’t done it so far.

    Other anti-Trump conservative commentators have argued that conservatism would be healthier in the long run if Harris wins in November. I have some sympathy for this argument, but it assumes that Trump would simply walk away from another lost presidential race.

    Trump has given us no reason to believe that. But more importantly, GOP voters have not indicated that their loyalty to Trump depends on the results.

    Trump has swept the Republican ticket in every election since his initial victory in 2016. In 2018, Republicans lost the House. In 2020, the GOP lost the presidency and the Senate. In 2022, the Republicans strictly claimed the House but the very weak expectations that called for a “red wave”.

    Despite a clear record of failure, GOP voters have again decided to nominate Trump for a third consecutive presidential ticket. Instead of getting serious about defeating the disastrous Democratic agenda of the last four years, Republicans would rather chase the same lightning in a bottle that Trump caught in 2016. If three disappointing election cycles, assuming a Trump loss in November, don’t are enough for voters to abandon Trump, I don’t see why a fourth would be any different.

    Trump will make it easier for his supporters to rally around him again. Facing an embarrassing loss to Harris in November, does anyone think Trump won’t claim the election was somehow “rigged” again?

    What if Trump wins? Will he leave? May be.

    While a victory would only embolden Trump’s conservative streak, the electoral losses do not appear to have diminished their influence. Does MAGA’s grip on the party feel weaker now than it did in 2016? Or even in 2020?

    The most likely outcome is that win or lose, we will have to live with the MAGA Republicans for the foreseeable future. The first step in reducing their influence is to have their glorious leader out of politics. A loss could extend that time frame.

    A natural exit after serving two terms is more likely to break the deification that some Republicans have for Trump, while also being a much more convenient narrative to shift their undying support to a new candidate.

    The GOP has fully embraced MAGA, and that decision is likely to continue regardless of the outcome of this election. The decisions to abandon pro-life, conservative economic policies and conservative values ​​were a vision for the future of the party. We have years, if not decades, of work to right the ship. The outcome of 2024 matters little in the trajectory of how we do this.

    Ultimately, I don’t think the future of conservatism changes all that much with a Trump loss or victory in 2024. The reality is that, regardless of the outcome, anti-Trump Republicans have a lot of work to do to take our party. back. It starts with supporting conservatives like Kemp.

    Dace Potas is an opinion columnist for USA TODAY and a graduate of DePaul University with a degree in political science.

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