Opinion: I'm a conservative who can't vote Trump. I choose an actual Republican leader.
For as long as I’ve been covering politics, I’ve been writing about why I cannot vote for Donald Trump or Vice President Kamala Harris for president.
While I’ve endlessly explained why, I haven’t written as much about why I believe a write-in candidate is the right answer to such a hopeless election.
My write-in vote for president will be for Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp. He is a successful Republican with executive experience and has demonstrated clearly how to navigate the insane world of Trump’s GOP without sacrificing the truth. He is an actual conservative I can support.
However, who I am voting for isn't important for this conversation. The "why" I'm voting the way I am is more complex.
A Republican like Brian Kemp is who the GOP should rally behind
Very few Republicans who rose during the Trump era of U.S. politics have navigated the landscape effectively. Many have tied their own careers entirely to Trump. Others have made political martyrs of themselves in opposition
There are a rare few Republicans who have stood up to Trump as boldly as Brian Kemp, alongside other Georgia GOP officials, and come out the other side relatively unscathed.
Kemp's stand against Trump came in the wake of Trump's 2020 loss, in which Trump attempted to pressure Georgia Republicans to overturn the election results that gave the state to Biden. Trump called for Kemp to block the certification of the results, which was refused as Kemp believed the move to be illegal under Georgia law. Georgia ultimately went to Biden.
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Since then, Kemp has affirmed repeatedly that the election "was not stolen," adding fuel to Trump's vendetta against him. Despite all of this, Kemp defeated his Trump-endorsed opponent to secure the GOP nomination for governor in 2022, and eventually won the governorship for a second term, handily defeating another election denier, Stacey Abrams.
While Trump and other MAGA Republicans have spent the past four years distracting the party from any sense of functionality, Kemp has been effectively leading Georgia despite attacks on his name from Trump and his allies. As governor, Kemp has signed into law major conservative accomplishments, instituting school choice in Georgia, protecting unborn life, and delivering the lowest unemployment rate in state history during his first term.
Instead of joining the national drama, Kemp has done his best to stay in his lane and deliver results for his constituents, which is exactly the attitude I can support. He is the kind of Republican conservatives should be supporting.
Choice between Trump and Harris is not one I'm willing to make
I morally cannot vote for Trump or Harris. Both pose a significant danger to our country and cannot be trusted with power.
As a conservative, my opposition to Harris should be obvious. However, for many Republicans like myself, Trump's character makes him clearly unfit for office, even if we favor some of his policies over Harris'. His attempts to steal an election and his rampant abuse of women are both disqualifying in my eyes. They should be for all conservatives.
So, I'm not voting for either party's nominee in the 2024 presidential race.
When most people hear me say that, their reflexive response is that in our binary election dynamic, not voting for either of the two major party candidates is throwing away my vote.
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While this would be true if we were choosing a leader for eternity, the fact that we have elections every four years gives protest votes their value.
The future of conservatism or liberalism is not dependent on a single election but rather on the trajectory of the movements over a more extended period. Protest votes can alter that trajectory by forcing parties to account for losing supporters.
Conservatives and progressives who oppose their party's candidate have the opportunity to tell party leadership that the status quo is not acceptable. Our country deserves better candidates.
Will the GOP listen to our protest votes?
After the election, a massive analysis machine will boot up, with statisticians, politicians and commentators trying to figure out why the winners won and why the losers lost.
In that analysis, there will be people who voted for Republican candidates down the ticket but chose not to vote for Trump out of their concerns for his character.
Whether or not the GOP makes the right choices with that information is another question. I hope that regardless of the election outcome, the GOP takes a hard look at the votes that could be won if they separate from Trumpism. I'm not optimistic about the future of the Republican Party, but I hope to give them the indication that my vote can be won if they simply correct course away from Donald Trump.
What happens if Trump loses? Will he go away? He hasn't so far.
Other anti-Trump conservative commentators have argued that conservatism would be healthier in the long term if Harris won in November. I have some sympathy for this argument, but it assumes that Trump would simply go away following another lost presidential race.
Trump has given us no reason to think that. But more important, GOP voters have not indicated that their loyalty to Trump is contingent on results.
Trump has brought down the Republican ticket in every election since his initial 2016 win. In 2018, Republicans lost the House. In 2020, the GOP lost the presidency and the Senate. In 2022, Republicans narrowly reclaimed the House but heavily underperformed expectations that called for a “red wave.”
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Despite a clear track record of failure, GOP voters have again decided to nominate Trump for a third consecutive presidential ticket. Instead of getting serious about defeating the disastrous Democratic agenda of the past four years, Republicans would rather chase the same lightning in a bottle that Trump caught in 2016. If three disappointing election cycles, assuming a Trump loss in November, aren’t enough for voters to abandon Trump, I don’t see why a fourth would be any different.
Trump will make it easy for his supporters to rally around him again. In the face of an embarrassing loss to Harris in November, does anyone think that Trump won’t claim the election was somehow “rigged” again?
What happens if Trump wins? Will he go away? Maybe.
While a victory would only embolden Trump's vein of conservatism, electoral losses don't seem to have diminished their influence. Does MAGA's grip on the party feel weaker now than in 2016? Or even in 2020?
The more likely outcome is that win or lose, we are going to have to live with MAGA Republicans for the foreseeable future. The first step in reducing their influence is for their glorious leader to be out of politics. A loss could extend that timeline.
A natural exit after serving two terms is more likely to break the deification that some Republicans have for Trump while also being a far more convenient narrative for switching their undying support to a new candidate.
The GOP has fully embraced MAGA, and that decision is likely to continue regardless of the outcome of this election. The decisions to abandon pro-lifers, conservative economic policies and conservative values were a vision for the future of the party. We have years, if not decades, of work cut out for us to right the ship. The result of 2024 matter little in the trajectory of how we do so.
In the end, I don’t think the future of conservatism changes all that much with a Trump loss or victory in 2024. The reality is that regardless of the outcome, anti-Trump Republicans have a lot of work to do to take our party back. It starts with supporting conservatives like Kemp.
Dace Potas is an opinion columnist for USA TODAY and a graduate of DePaul University with a degree in political science.
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This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Opinion: As a Republican, I'll vote for a real conservative. Not Trump