I heard a guy call into The Rush Limbaugh Show on the Ides of March, saying he was 45 years old, had never voted before, but was “proud” that he cast his first-ever ballot for Donald Trump for president.
“The closest I came was to voting for [Ross] Perot in 1992,” the caller, identified as John in Orlando, said. “I guess I just never felt like there was a candidate, you know, that represented me or who would actually do what I thought needed to be done for this country.”
I know John and others like him are proud they finally have someone they can vote for. In fact, John said he is “just tired of these career guys, these career politicians running the country into the ground.”
But I’m not so sure that John and others who have spent their whole lives up until now not voting aren’t also part of the problem. I hate to break it to the non-voters, but those of us who do vote can’t find a candidate we agree with 100 percent of the time, either. We just pick the person who closest matches what we believe.
[pullquote align=”left” cite=”” link=”” color=”” class=”” size=””]Who are they to sit on the sidelines?[/pullquote]Meanwhile, all the Johns from Orlando not voting have helped put the country into the position where they feel the need to vote for Trump in the first place. Had they collectively voted during their lives, they could have helped the rest of us produce results that would prevented the country from falling into the disrepair that they believe it has fallen into.
Yes, they have as much a right to make their voices heard as anyone else. But who are they to sit on the sidelines for their whole lives and then come in to drive out the Republicanaanites when the rest of us have been trying all our lives to do that?
I’m not interested in the self-satisfied proclamations of first-time voters that their so-called virtue has been lying dormant — just waiting for a Trump to come along.
Finally, they say, someone is running who says what I’m thinking.
Well, here’s what you’ve wrought, John from Orlando: when there was no one running who said exactly what you were thinking and you didn’t mark a ballot, all those grimy politicians you hate in your own party assumed you didn’t care and so they did what they wanted. And, oftentimes, the other party simply won the election. And that got you even less of what you wanted in the end.
So now you’ve met your deliverer, but he stirs up such passions that the party itself is working to stop him. And even if they fail, your deliverer might very well lose in November. Then you’ll be stuck with someone far worse than any RINO you ever feared.
