I have been a member of the Republican Party since I turned 18. And well before that, I considered myself a rational, moderate conservative.
For all that time, living in Jewish communities in West LA, Berkeley, Northwest DC and other less-than-conservative places, I have openly and proudly identified myself as a conservative and a Republican. In my community, identifying as anything other than a liberal Democrat makes you at the very least a curiosity. More commonly, it places you into the perceived category of maybe-racist/surely-sexist. In that context, I served as an executive officer of the Republican clubs at Berkeley and Georgetown; I worked for several GOP campaigns at the federal, state and local levels; and I attended numerous Republican Party conventions.
I certainly have not identified as a conservative and a Republican because it was fun or a helpful way to ensure that I was the most popular person in the room. I remained a proud Republican in spite of asinine, indefensible positions my party advocated or articulated over the years… Prop 187, a nuance-free pro-life stance, “f**k-the-Jews-they-don’t-vote-for-us-anyway,” a foolish, dangerous, destructive and counterproductive approach to drug laws and their enforcement, a flat rejection of LGBT rights, an aversion to tax increases of any kind regardless of the state of the treasury, and financing off the books and on credit the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq – wars I believe were just and necessary, though poorly managed and executed – all come to mind in this context. None of these were great ideas. None of them were easy to defend to my family and friends. But, through all of that, and more, I remained a member of the party.
I have remained a Republican, because I came to the conclusion, when I first considered political ideas more than two decades ago, that I prioritized my policy preferences in a very clear hierarchy.
At the top of this hierarchy I prioritized foreign policy, because foreign policy mistakes will almost certainly get people (and likely a significant number of people) killed.
On the second rung of this ladder, I prioritized economic policy. Poor economic policies will prevent people from putting food on their table. When people can’t put food on their tables, that also causes suffering and death, though in significantly smaller numbers than result from foreign policy blunders.
Finally, behind both foreign and economic policy, I prioritized social policy. Flawed social policy can result in serious harm to people. In extreme cases, it can even result in deaths. Suicides of ostracized and unsupported LGBT youth provide an obvious example. However, social policy errors are not likely to result in nearly as much harm or death as mistakes in foreign policy or economic policy.
With that prioritization of policies, since the early 1990s until this year’s primaries, while I have disagreed with almost everything the GOP has come to stand for in the social policy arena, I could still vote Republican with a clear conscience. During that time, I have come to disagree with almost everything “mainstream” Democrats have come to stand for in the foreign policy arena: a weak, retreating, almost isolationist, appeasing approach to foreign policy that must have Scoop Jackson rolling in his grave. I still think the GOP is right more often than Democrats on economic policy, although the GOP’s lack of fiscal discipline and uncompromising approach to tax policy have diminished the Republican advantage in that area. And, even in the area of social policy, I have been troubled by the tendency of Democrats to try to push social policy initiatives through courts untethered to originalist (or any other) limiting principles instead of via the elected branches of government.
But, with Trump at the top of the ticket, and with many in the GOP now seeming to fall in line behind him, that calculus has changed. I (and I suspect many others like me) am now saddened to conclude that I can no longer consider myself a Republican.
On social policy, Trump actually, ironically, may improve the GOP in certain respects. Though he has been pretending over the past few months that he’s a social conservative, we all know (and Trump knows that we all know) that he is putting on an act to get the nomination. I think it would be great to have a pro-choice nominee in the GOP. While I know this would be heresy within some quarters of the GOP, I think the party’s failure to embrace equal rights – including the right to marry the person they love – for gay people is a stain on the party.
But Mr. Trump's blatant sexism, his failure to disavow racists and his demagoguery against Muslim Americans as well as against foreign nationals outweigh even significant social policy progress on other issues. So, on social policy, Trump is effectively like having all the good policies of the Democrats, but with sexism, racism and bigotry mixed in. The result: the Democrats are still better for our country on social policy.
On economic policy, Trump hasn’t said much of substance. While economic policy is really about cutting deals, and while Trump claims to be good at cutting deals, the one bit of economic policy Trump has emphasized is a more nativist/mercantilist trade policy, which has never worked in the past… and there is no indication it will work now. On balance, while it’s hard to tell what his policies might actually be, Trump is likely a net negative on economic policy.
This brings me to foreign policy, the one place where there is no question in my mind that the GOP has had for the past half century a clear advantage over the Democrats. Trump threatens a clear break with everything the GOP has stood for in the realm of foreign policy since I became a Republican.
With the country reeling from the September 11 attacks and a nativist sentiment available to be unleashed, President Bush visited a mosque six days after the attacks to make clear to all Americans that we are not at war with Islam. That, I believe, may go down as one of the most important moments of the 21st century. At what could have been an historic turning point towards a true clash of civilizations, Bush instead placed us firmly on the side of moderate Islam in its internal clash with radical Islam. Trump now threatens to upend that strategy. His thoughtless, reactionary, counterproductive and morally repugnant call to ban all Muslims from entering our country is, quite possibly, the most dangerous statement made by a politician running for office in my lifetime.
We live in a very dangerous time. President Obama has virtually abandoned the field in Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria, and left Libya and Yemen exposed. He has left our allies in the Middle East and Africa scrambling for alternatives to an America that has decided to follow events from the rear and that establishes “red lines” that have no meaning when they are crossed. Daesh has taken advantage of our absence to take over large swaths of territory, massacring and terrorizing civilians, many of whom counted on the U.S. for support.
Threats abound throughout the world. In Eastern Europe, Putin is leading a resurgent, irredentist, territorially aggressive Russia, challenging our allies in the Black Sea region, the Baltic and now the Middle East.
China constitutes an increasingly aggressive rival in Asia and the Pacific, while maintaining a monumental investment in our national economy (including, ominously, in our now massive government debt). With the consolidation of its military leadership, with its development of a Blue Water navy that can project power and interdict sea lanes, with its power grab and militarization of the South China Sea and with its bellicose sword-rattling towards many of its neighbors, including many of our longtime allies, China is on its way to becoming a strategic military threat.
The combination of challenges presented by Russia and China stand poised to undo the great strides towards democracy and democratization that have been achieved around the world ever since President Reagan challenged Gorbachev to tear down that Wall.
Our inability or unwillingness to check Iran’s and North Korea’s nuclear ambitions compound these threats.
At this moment of great peril, the GOP appears poised to nominate to the Presidency of the United States, the holder of the nuclear launch codes, the commander-in-chief of the most powerful armed forces in human history, an unstable man with no military experience and even less foreign policy expertise.
Mr. Trump threatens our alliances with our neighbors, as well. He has made blatantly racist attacks on Mexican immigrants as “rapists and killers” and he has foolishly (and quite regularly) attempted to publicly shame Mexico into paying for a border wall that would not solve our border security challenges even if it were built.
Mr. Trump and his supporters do not represent the GOP I believe in. They do not represent the GOP I have supported for two decades.
I believe in supporting small business and entrepreneurs.
I believe in helping kids struggling in inner city schools to find a way out of those schools instead of helping the teachers’ union bosses with their fight to keep those kids in failing schools.
I believe that a strong US military, judiciously used, has often (if not always) been, and can continue to be, an indispensable force for immense good in this world.
I believe that the free market is, and always has been, much more effective than government programs at lifting people out of poverty.
I believe that the more centralized the government, the further that government is from the governed, and the less effective it is at accomplishing key goals: fighting poverty, running schools, and performing the many other functions it is crucially important for government to perform.
I believe that, though it certainly creates winners and losers, the aggregate benefits of free trade are irrefutably more valuable than the isolated and temporary benefits of a mercantilist anti-trade policy.
I believe in building bridges to people of goodwill in other countries and cultures. I believe in tearing down, not building up, walls.
I believe in welcoming immigrants, recognizing that we are a nation of immigrants, and striving to be the shining city on the hill spoken of by Reagan, that city “teeming with people of all kinds living in harmony and peace; a city with free ports that hummed with commerce and creativity; and if there had to be city walls, the walls had doors and the doors were open to anyone with the will and the heart to get here.”
The GOP used to believe in all these things, too. That GOP, I am sad to say, may soon be a relic of the past. That GOP will not survive Donald Trump being nominated as its candidate for President of the United States.
I’ve watched with increasing dismay as many Republican leaders have gone from clearly (if not vocally) opposing Trump’s candidacy, to wishy-washy on his candidacy, to openness to his candidacy, and now, apparently, to full-throated support for his candidacy.
I do not write this out of anger or resentment or fear. I write this out of sorrow: sorrow that a party I have spent more than half my life supporting is soon to be no more; sorrow that a party that has done so much good for this country has been hijacked by a racist, sexist, xenophobic demagogue willing to say anything necessary in order to get into office; sorrow that the GOP’s leadership, when it had the opportunity to stop this from happening, failed to do so.
I just hope that this failure to save the Republican Party from Trump does not presage a failure by our country as a whole to stop Trump in the general election. But, because I cannot support a Trump candidacy, and because I cannot believe in, and do not believe I belong in, a party that would nominate a man like Mr. Trump, in the event Mr. Trump receives the Republican nomination, I will resign from the party and re-register as an independent. I urge all other Republicans of good will to do the same.
Yoni Fife is an attorney living in Los Angeles.
