Did you watch the VP debate the other night? I did. Most of it. I watched it on my laptop in the lobby of Trek Winery. The big VP debate party was in the other room --I stayed in the lobby with the swag table to deal with stragglers, eat my pizza, and sell a few hats. (Yes, the MarinGOP is selling hats for $25.00 a piece to help fund our outreach efforts. If you want a hat --better, if you want two hats-- we'll deliver anywhere in Marin. Especially if you take a sign too!)
Once again I was reminded that Democrats are really good at making personal arguments. (Well, they kind of have to be, the modern Left doesn't have any policies that can really stand up on their own.)
And, once again, some of the Republicans who attended the debate watch party reminded me of why I don't really fit in with the typical Republican voter profile in Marin. Well, it is a good thing I don't, because the Republican Party in California --maybe nationwide-- needs voters like me.
Actually, they need all of us. We all --regardless of faith, age, ethnic background, "culture", etc.-- need to get serious about turning out and voting in the next month.
We, collectively, as Republicans, combat the fact that Democrats have done a good job of making Donald Trump a bogeyman over the past eight years, by saying it's about "policies, not personalities." (Forget the fact that Kamala Harris has been VP for three+ years, forget the fact that Joe Biden has been President, Tim Walz was out there last night running against Trump. The Modern Left has no positive platform that basic Americans like. And yes, I gagged a little when I referred to Tim Walz as the "modern Left" --we're getting personal here, so I might as well say it, I genuinely hope I look a lot better than Tim Walz when I'm 60.)
But, instead of just saying "it is about policies, not personalities" maybe we should talk about how policies personally impact us.
So, I'm going to tell you why, in just a few days, I'm voting for Donald Trump --for the SIXTH TIME!
Yes, I'm a registered Republican. I'm a committed early voter --in part because these days I'm usually volunteering on election day. I voted for Donald Trump in the California Republican Primary back in 2016, the 2016 General Election, the 2020 California Republican Primary, the 2020 General election and the 2024 California Republican Primary. In a few days I will be voting for Donald Trump for the sixth time.
If you had told me when I was 18 that I would some day be voting for Republican candidates, a registered Republican, or a volunteer for Republican campaigns, I would have just given you the side-eye. Republicans were non existent on my college campus. And now, as an adult, I'll say it again, in general I've never seen a decent youth outreach effort on the part of Republicans in California. Never. I'm not saying the CAGOP doesn't have good intentions. But, culturally, getting out of your comfort zone is hard for a lot of people.
If you want the backstory of how I went from "basic Democrat" because everyone I knew was a Democrat --with a few years tossed in as a "No Party Preference" voter, I NEVER did the "AIP" thing, never-- to registered Republican, you can click here to read my really vintage "how I fled the Democrats and became a Republican essay" from a few years ago online. It has aged a bit, but hopefully not like milk.
Back around Christmas of 2015 I attended my first "Republican event" --I'd never been to a Republican event before. (Actually, unless you count St. Patrick's Day when I was an eleven year old dancer, took third place in my age group --far more impressive than it sounds considering that year there were more than 27 entries in my division-- and ended up sitting on a bench with half a dozen other little girls in matching green skirts crammed next to a friendly Bodhran player who could drink, play, and keep a close on the children at the same time, at an Irish bar I'd never been to any kind of political event. Give the Democrats credit --they understand how to show up for every cultural event under the sun. I still think that is a lesson too many Republicans haven't learned --you want to do real outreach? Do something more than brunch at the country club.) I didn't know what to expect when I walked in the door back in 2015. I'd bought my ticket online, I came alone, I didn't know anyone. With only a few exceptions everyone was decades older than I was. I ended up spending most of the night talking to a recently divorced guy in his late forties. In retrospect, I think he looked around the room, realized I was the only single woman under eighty there, and made a beeline to me to talk about his ex wife, his kids (he missed them all, the relocation to California, and the divorce, were both her idea), his dog, and property tax law. I still have no idea if he was an attorney, a CPA, or just a basic lonely divorced Republican guy obsessed with differential tax rates.
He did do something that almost no Republican I've met in the past eight years has bothered to do, he asked me why I was voting for Donald Trump. (I was wearing my little pink "woman voter for Trump" button I bought on Etsy.) I think I shocked, maybe impressed him, with my answer. I care about a multi layered economy, I care about the manufacturing sector --in large part because, traditionally in the 20th century, the American manufacturing sector helped propel millions of American families into the middle class-- and Donald Trump was the first serious candidate of my lifetime who actually talked about fighting for American industrial jobs.
In the 2016 Primaries I was the voter who was willing to gamble on the candidate who talked about American industry and jobs in the Lehigh Valley --and yes, I have lived in lovely Marin County for most of my life, but you can take a girl out of the industrial machine tool towns of New England, but you can never take away the desire to see the production lines run. Because, those dying New England towns were alive once and full of hope, and I'd gamble on anyone who even acknowledged that times were better once in the Lehigh, or upstate, or New London, and could be again.
By the general election of 2016 I was genuinely impressed by Donald Trump. I was impressed by his willingness to talk about difficult topics other --more professional-- politicians danced around. He talked about Oxycontin and overdoses and the devastating impact the 20 year journey from basic painkillers to Percocet, to Oxy, to Heroin to Fentanyl has had on America. I loved the fact he was willing to talk about jobs. Heck, I loved the fact that he had the guts --as a New Yorker-- to head into the wilds of South Carolina and take his New York humor on the road. (Hey, in case you've forgotten, before Donald Trump, no one thought a genuine urban New Yorker could ever connect with the South. And no, no matter what Hillary Clinton ever said, she was never a genuine example of urban New York. Donald Trump, garish, ethnically mixed, in your face, is as New York as my dad. And yes, my dad vividly remembers when the Dodgers were part of the subway series.) I really liked the fact he was willing to attempt to do outreach beyond the stereotypical base. (Hey, if anyone else had been willing to do outreach maybe when I go to a Republican event I wouldn't usually end up chatting with "tax policy guy.")
By 2020 I was impressed by Donald Trump. I was also a committed volunteer --I did the phone-banking thing, heck, I even phone-banked in the 2018 midterms. I ballot harvested too --apparently I, as an individual, harvested more ballots than the CAGOP according to one of my friends. (Umm... it really isn't that hard. Really!)
But, I had a horrible feeling in March of 2020. Panic it is a pandemic changed everything. April of 2020 made the very real good times of 2017, 2018 & 2019 just disappear for a lot of people. One of my friends referred to the impact of the Covid shut-down as a near war-time experience --life before and life after are two different chapters in the books of our lives.
By November of 2020 people were exhausted. They wanted "normal" --they wanted fewer riots, less crime. They forgot that the riots and crime and masks of 2020 were a 2020 thing, not a Donald Trump thing. I don't blame the swing voters desperate for normal in 2020. We were all desperate for more normal.
I don't even blame a lot of Republicans for being bad at articulating what was really at stake. Hey... a lot of Republicans like to stand around and talk about tax policy. (Some just like to make crude comments. Ugh, so tired of macho virtue signaling from people not macho at all.)
Very few people can talk about the fear factor of people scared they'll get mugged in the parking lot of a grocery store. (My dad can. Did I mention my dad was uniform back in the day? In really really really bad neighborhoods. I grew up knowing words like "recidivism" and knowing that monsters are real and even a so-called "nice neighborhood" isn't necessarily safe.)
Frankly, I think most of us lost sight of what was really going on in 2020. Since 2020 my inbox has been filled on a regular basis by utter nonsense from people who are either trying to profit off of the genuine fear of people worried about inflation, crime, etc. or people who are the pied pipers of a crazy pack.
A couple of days ago I got another lengthy crazy email from someone claiming the world will end on Rosh Hashanah and something something "new world order." The email writer then, rather madly, claimed he'd "accept" the "title" of conspiracy theorist if the world didn't end and would never send another email. Hey, the world didn't end and, 18 hours after his "the world will end" deadline the email nut was back sending out "be afraid, be afraid, this time I know what I'm talking about emails."
The world didn't end! (Congrats!) I suspected then that the end-of-the-worlders would just revamp and come up with a new date and go back to sending out their crazy cut and paste emails. (Hey, I know a few things about millenarian philosophy --remember, New York and Connecticut childhood. Read up on the burned over region if you want to know just how wild and crazy New England can be sometimes. We're not just all about machine tooling. There are some real benefits to living in a place where a whole bunch of people climbed a hill to wait for the second coming and then had to climb back down again three days later --you develop a cynical sense of optimism, if it is the 19th century you focus on milking the cows (twice a day) if it is the 21st century you sock away money for a rainy day and leave FOMO to the cute people on Instagram.)
So why am I a Trump voter --again-- in 2024? Why is it about "policies not personalities" for me? In no particular order for me it is about hope, real hope. There is a hands in the air nasty micromanaging attitude to the modern Democrats. In the past six months I've had Democrat men tell me I should be "raped" for being a Republican so I can "learn my lesson." I suspect "raping political opponents" isn't official Leftist political philosophy --yet, at least not in this country, I've done business with people on different continents, you do NOT WANT TO KNOW WHAT HAPPENS IN THE Democratic Republic of Congo. But, for me, at this point, being a Republican is about personal choice and opportunity. Modern Leftists are a bunch of micromanagers, worse, they're a bunch of lousy micromanagers. They don't seem to want to allow me --as a single, adult female, to have the opportunity to save and control my own retirement money. So here are my reasons for voting for Trump in no particular order.
1) Choice & Money:
If you are my age, if you are younger, you've been told Social Security has been dying for your entire adult life. If you are like me, you've also still been obligated to pay into a "dying" system. Like a lot of younger people I've always been a "private contractor" which means I've always paid both the employer and the employee side of social security. And, because I'm barely four generations removed from the peasant villages on the fringes of war torn long-gone European empires, I also have made an effort to shove money away for my own "rainy day." And yet, there is a crazy idea on MSNBC being floated to "shore up social security" by "repealing" tax benefits on 401ks. Hey, I pay my taxes, I pay my social security withholding whatever, I pay it without actually thinking I will personally get any benefit from it, and then --so as not to be a burden on others-- I try and shove some money away for my old age. I genuinely don't feel like Democrats are capable of respecting savers or workers anymore. Like a lot of Americans I'm going to spend the majority of my life working. I want to have some choices as to how I save and manage my money which is a manifestation of my time.
2) Choice & Education:
I don't have kids. (I also don't have as much money as Taylor Swift's cat. So, I'm not sure I fall into the fashionable "childless cat lady" camp.) But, I have a lot of friends who do have young kids. (And I've been on the college campus in this century.) And I am frankly terrified about what is happening in the public school system from K-12 right through community college and state schools. At a university level, science is taking a back seat to woke nonsense. In the K-12 system kids aren't being taught the necessary basics and they are, increasingly having ideological nonsense shoved at them by political agitators disguised as "teachers." Go beyond the actual failings of the K-12 system and we have to confront the fact that a lot of public schools are increasingly physically dangerous. We don't talk about the Virginia Governor's race enough, but swing voters swung for a Republican candidate in Virginia a couple of years ago because Democrats in charge of the public schools were targeting parents who dared to complain about their daughters and sons not being physically safe on school campuses. Schools aren't what they were back in the '80s or the '70s or whenever. And, I don't want my tax dollars supporting a school system that is so scary that my friends are doing everything they can to get their kids into a private school or trying to figure out how to live in the 21st century on one income so one parent can stay home and homeschool. I want parents --and college students-- and kids to have genuine educational choice.
3) Choice & Safety:
Hey, my dad was in uniform. A lot of the men in my life have stood guard in the middle of the night in really bad neighborhoods. I'm an unlikely Republican --I don't like the snobbery of people, of any political persuasion, who aren't as passionate about making poor neighborhoods as safe as "rich" neighborhoods. And, I don't like the ignorance of people who think that just because they live in a million dollar neighborhood they can avoid crime. I want to vote for a candidate who politically makes choices that will make EVERYONE safer. The revolving door policy in too many big cities means some really dangerous people are on the street. Our near "open door" border policy means a lot of extremely dangerous people are running loose in the United States. Heck, I don't even like the idea of people with DUIs driving on American roads. A few years ago I lost a good friend to an accident --her car was hit in broad daylight by someone who ran a red light while driving under the influence. I don't know anything about the person who killed my friend --I don't want to know. But, I'm terrified that we as Americans no longer have the "choice" to keep non citizens with a history of drunk driving from driving on our roads. (I don't want ANYONE driving drunk on American roads.)
4) Choice & Opportunity:
I want to live in a country that doesn't actively try and stop people from pursuing opportunities --business, personal, educational. Since the ghastly Summer of riots and Covid in 2020 and the the malevolent malaise of the Biden-Harris administration a lot of opportunities have been squandered. I genuinely like Donald Trump's apparently obvious affection for pursuing opportunity. I like the idea of a political party that wants Americans to pursue opportunities. (Yeah, I know, the Democrats have pursued the unique opportunity of putting tampons in the boy's bathroom, but I want something a little more reality based. I want Americans to feel hopeful about starting an ice cream business or something.)
5) Choice & Foreign Policy:
Traditionally, most politicians are divided between "foreign policy" types and "domestic policy" types. It is rare to find a politician that is good at both. However, looking back at 2017, 2018 & 2019 I have to say I liked Donald Trump's foreign policy choices. For the first time in my adult life we had fewer coffins coming back with flags. That was a good thing. I also think Donald Trump articulated a great message overseas. I genuinely think Trump's 2017 speech in Warsaw was one of the most significant speeches of the post World War II era. If you haven't seen the Warsaw speech please go on youtube and watch it. This is what an American president should sound like.
6) Choice & Faith:
I love the First Amendment. I love the fact that over two hundred years ago America's "founding fathers" made a radical commitment to religious freedom. (Yes, the first amendment is also about free speech and freedom of association.) America's commitment to religious freedom is, in my opinion, one of the most unique things about this crazy, garish, big, bold, naive and slightly crazy country I love so much. Three or four generations ago most of my relatives did not live in countries where there was any type of religious freedom. If you didn't belong to the dominant, or state approved, faith, your life would be severely curtailed in so many ways. I'm part Irish --a tiny part. People always assume my last name is Germanic in some way. It isn't, thanks to an Irish paternal great-grandfather I have an Irish last name. I'm also related to one of the most famous of the radical Irish "hedgerow teachers." Back in the 18th century, in Ireland, Roman Catholics were discriminated against. Rich Irish Catholics --and there were some rich Irish Catholics-- could send their children abroad to other Catholic countries like France for an education. Poor Catholics didn't have that choice. The hedgerow teachers broke the laws to give poor Irish families educational choices. One of my distant many times great aunts had a price on her head because she operated an illegal "hedgerow school" teaching poor Catholic children. And there are people who don't think nuns can be really wild. (Did I mention, she left a ritzy French convent to live rough as a homeless teacher in the wilds of Ireland? Now that is a commitment to education.)
These days, my Jewish friends with kids are terrified of sending their kids to public schools --or even once prestigious universities-- because administrators have allowed kids to be targeted for their faith. A lot of people of faith now feel like their choices --their ability to interact in the secular world-- are being curtailed because they are genuinely worried about their personal safety. That isn't right.
7) Choice & Policies:
I'm voting for Donald Trump (for the sixth time!) in a few days because I care about policies more than I care about personalities. (But, if I was a personality voter woah.... Tim Walz is weird.) I care about making a political choice that, hopefully, will allow all of us to make more choices going forward. I want to vote for someone who is willing to acknowledge the big picture problems we face --drugs, a chaotic open border, urban decline, a failing school system, a supply chain system that is a disaster, foreign policy situations that are getting Americans killed, etc.
And, I'm not just voting, I'm volunteering. I've been out delivering Trump signs --and Garvey & Coulombe signs-- around Marin. Last night I was helping raise a few bucks for more signs. (And yeah, some aging woman stopped by to shout at me and tell me how "disgusting" I am.... because Marin, or whatever. To be fair, I probably "triggered" her and probably deserved it.... long irrelevant story. But, guess what, both of my parents are from the Bronx --as Ogden Nash said, no thanks-- so I can trigger the average suburbanite without really trying. And when I'm in a bad mood.... hey there is a reason the Irish became the cannonfodder of the world's armies. And to think, I'm only part Irish.) And yes, I had some people make the usual comments about how you have to have "balls" to put up a sign and their neighbors would kill them if they put up a sign. (Um.... you really want to live in a neighborhood --even with golf course frontage-- with homicidal neighbors? Really?)
Hey, if you can't put up a sign or don't feel comfortable wearing a button or hat, I understand. I wear a button or hat most days.
But, if anything I said resonated with you, please vote. If you feel like doing outreach, please consider sharing with YOUR FRIENDS AND SOCIAL network why you are voting for Trump. And, if you want to stay in the "political closet" I understand. It is a scary world out there. It isn't fun getting threats. (It is kind of hilarious when aging Obama fangirls turned "true conservatives" call me a RINO --I kind of have to enjoy the moments. You can hardly tell both my parents are from the cynical Bronx, can you?)
And, if you want to volunteer, you can phonebank from the secretive privacy of your own home for Trump. TrumpForce47. Pretty easy to use.
These are my reasons for voting a Republican ticket (again) in a few days. Feel free to share if you want. Feel free to send me hatemail if you want. Feel free to help.
Freedom is American. I'm voting for Donald Trump because I love freedom.
Thank you for your patience.
~Sarah Nagle
(Soon to be ex) Secretary, MarinGOP
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