This Difficult Election

I'll likely be changing my registration after the April primary election in Pennsylvania. I have been a Republican since first registering to vote in 1994. After I get the chance to cast my ballot for the primary, I'll likely have to leave the party, and become one of the somewhat rare Americans who switch their party affiliation. I'll become a Democrat. Somewhere, the 1993 arch-conservative version of Chris Johnson is shuddering.

What's prompting this change? The likely nomination of businessman Donald Trump. He doesn't possess the temperament, ethics, or grounding in public sector to be deserving of the presidency. And, if he is the nominee of the Republican Party, then the party's values are too incongruous with my own.

This is hard to do. Few Americans stray to the other party from where they were brought up. I was brought up in a Republican household. And I'm proud of that background. I'm proud to have been a member of the party of Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt, and Reagan. But now I must cross to the other tribe. In part this is necessary because of Pennsylvania's closed primary system: I take the democratic process too seriously to forfeit my chance to choose nominees, which I'd be doing if I were independent. More importantly, I must do this to make my protest of Mr. Trump as nominee more complete. If he's the party's nominee for the President of the United States, then I cannot be a member of the party. It's as simple as that.

Both of our political parties have their flaws. Democrats tend to underestimate the true costs of their desired policies. They also tend to overestimate the benefits of their desired policies. Republicans, on the other hand, tend to exaggerate the threat posed by liberal ideas and are a bit too quick to dismiss the benefits that come from government involvement in the economy. Regardless of the party I join, these flaws remain.

The Republican party has been making me feel more unwelcome, though, in the past few years. I don't share the fear many in the party have of illegal immigration. I'm a member of a public sector union, which many in the party see as a great threat to the nation's economic and political fabric. I'm a public school teacher and a fan of school funding, which it seems the Republicans (and many Democrats, too) seem to be against. Further, the party seems to have moved on from the assertive foreign policy ideology of the Reagan era and seems to be embracing something more akin to isolationism, which bothers me greatly.

Truthfully, there's a lot to dislike about both parties and their candidates for president. No candidate is speaking seriously about entitlement reform. Any discussion of the national debt has disappeared. There's little talk of how we could use tax dollars to fund schools or build infrastructure, endeavors which can enhance long run economic growth. No candidate is putting forth a very optimistic or ambitious set of ideas about what America can do to better the world.

And I'm no big fan of our current president. Though he's a decent man, I'm dismayed at the scolding tone he too often takes on social and economic issues. I'm disheartened at the passive and pessimistic approach he takes to foreign policy. His reliance on drones to assert U.S. power abroad concerns me. That being said, he's a decent man.

Mr. Trump is not. And I can't put much trust in Senator Cruz whose zealousness in pursuing Constitutional values (not in and of itself a bad thing) has seen him engage in some destructive parliamentary tactics as a Senator. I'm left with Governor Kasich who, as a moderate, doesn't stand much of a chance.

Moderates like me don't have much of a choice.

Pennsylvania's primary election is in late April. I look forward to voting in it, and casting a vote against a man I think wholly unsuited to be President of this great nation. But once that vote is cast, and once the nomination is settled in his favor, it's time for me to go. The party of Lincoln might be high-jacked (hopefully for just one election cycle) by someone with the temperament of George Wallace, and that'll make me retreat to a party that offers me a less horrifying idea of what it means to be an American.