This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2016, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.
I am out of the Republican Party. With the rise of Donald Trump, the Republican Party has dumped the last vestiges of conservatism. Though party faithful scramble, spit and stutter to make the best of this intellectual disaster, it pains me to see so many otherwise reasonable people defending the indefensible. Mike Pence isn't running for president. Trump's kids aren't running for president. Newt, Christie, Paul Ryan and other more reasonable Republicans aren't the Republican nominee. It should tell us something that Trump's defenders must point to people who support Trump rather than pointing to Trump himself.
So I'm out of the Republican Party. I changed my state voter registration to unaffiliated. It's way easy to do. You just re-register online with your county clerk and, instead of checking the "Republican" affiliation, you check the "unaffiliated" box. All it really means, practically speaking, is that I won't be allowed to vote in state Republican primaries.
There is no lesser of two evils in the choice before conservatives. Both candidates are politically evil. I will not vote for one evil because I think the other is more evil. Bill Buckley famously held that he would vote for the most electable conservative. Neither Hillary Clinton nor Trump is conservative. I think building some gargantuan wall on our southern border is un-American. I think rounding up millions of people and isolating an entire religion are un-American ideas. Trump is not America first; he's cynicism first. He's fear and anger first.
The Republican Party was founded on the conservative sense of justice, lost its way mid-20th century and regained its identity during the Reagan years. With Trump, it is now gone. The national Republican Party is no longer conservative. No longer is there any bulwark standing between sanity and insanity. We're now simply trading between political correctness and fear and anger. We're trading with our worst selves.
Of course, unaffiliating is symbolic. I remain loyal to my friends. I remain loyal to politicians I admire, such as Gov. Gary Herbert, Sen. Mike Lee and a host of state and local officials. As a conservative first, I am loyal to people, not parties. But neither do I want to underestimate the symbolism. The Utah Republican Party is dangerously close to leaving behind many influential conservative voters. I'm unaffiliating on this basis, too.
All of the craziness, the obsession with constitutional minutia, the cultish worshipping of founding fathers, the purity tests and just plain emotional know-nothingness trending inside the state GOP are deeply disturbing to me. When Herbert and even Lee are accused by state GOPers of committing some sort of apostasy because they chose to gather signatures as well as attend the state convention, I'm flabbergasted.
I understand completely why many Republicans won't unaffiliate from the GOP. Elected officials really can't. I get that. But for people who can, I highly encourage you, now that state primaries are over, to unaffiliate. Your intelligence and political integrity will be challenged by Trump. And, here in Utah, the state GOP needs to find itself again, and one way you can help it do that is to vote with your feet and leave its company, even if temporarily.
You won't regret it. Now is the time for reasonable people to take a stand.
Paul Mero is president and CEO of Next Generation Freedom Fund.