I think I voted for some Democrats in the 1982 midterms, when I was 20 and still fighting with my Democrat upbringing. The last Democrat I know I voted for was 26 years ago – because she was unopposed, and her constituent services person worked wonders (she actually went on to be one of the few sane members of the Saint Paul City Council). Not sure I’d do it again, but there you have it.
That, and a few elections during my Libertarian years, 1994 through 1998, were about as far as it went for me not voting Republican.
But notwithstanding that, it’s still not a “gimme” of a vote. The GOP has to earn my vote, or at least (some years) be the lesser of two evils – because if the lesser evil loses, you get a greater evil.
But I’ll be voting GOP this year, straight ticket, every race. No exceptions.
And I’ll be doing it for a lot of reasons.
I’ll be doing it for the guy who ran the little shop over on Snelling that tried to stay open during Walz’s arbitrary, scientifically-vacuous lockdowns – and failed, while the big-box store he competed successfully with for two decades trundled along with government’s blessing. And for every other business that got shut down.
I’ll be voting especially to repudiate Keith Ellison, who spent most of two years siccing his legal goons on businesses that were trying to stay alive, owned by people who’d done something Keith Ellison has never done; invested their life’s savings into trying to run a business in this state. I’m voting Republican to help bring the day when that might not be a stupid idea, maybe, someday, again.
I’m voting GOP for every cop who shows up and tries to do a good job, and is tired of having the political class spitting on her. For every officer that’s brought in a perp, and seen them sprung before the paperwork was done.
I’m voting GOP for every father that had to watch their kids being born via video. For everyone who had to watch their loved ones die via video, or hear about it after the fact from some overworked nurse on the phone.
I’m especially voting GOP for everyone that went through that, and then watched Governor Klink, mask stretched over his maw, jammed into a seat at George Floyd’s very public, very crowded funeral, for which “science” somehow made an exception. I’m voting to throw a huge, red finger at anyone who excused that.
I’m voting a straight Republican ticket for all the nurses, techs and doctors who got laid off about twenty minutes after being hailed as “front line heroes”, because their clinics were shuttered, or their hospitals and networks were realigning due to the market distortions caused by the lockdowns.
I’m voting GOP for everyone wondering how the hell they’re going to heat their house AND buy food this winter.
I’m doing it because of all your “SAVE DEMOCRACY – VOTE BLUE!” buncombe. The left is, year in, year out, the actual threat to our constitutional order, to “democracy”, to freedom.
I’m voting Republican to stick it to the Electoral College denialists and the Supreme Court Conspiracy Theorists. And because Democrats are inflation deniers, crime deniers, American History deniers and, here in Minnesota, fraud deniers.
I’m voting Republican for everyone that lost their job due to the Vaccine mandate.
I’m voting Republican for every National Guardsman – every “19 year cook” – who had to face off against their fellow citizen in the street because their political leaders in Mpls and Saint Paul were too PC and cowardly to enforce the law, reform the police and deliver the “privilege” of public safety for we pay all those f**k**g taxes before Minneapolis became a powder keg.
I’m voting GOP for every beleaguered homeowner in North Minneapolis and the lower East Side of Saint Paul who wonders if this is the night all that gunfire in the distance stitches the walls and windows of their house.
I’m voting GOP to tell every Latino and Black voter who is pondering voting GOP for the first time, and feels as I did when left the Left in 1984 – like they’re stepping off a cliff into the great unknown – “Welcome. Let’s kick some ass”.
I’m voting GOP with the “Rocks and Cows” – all the people in Greater Minnesota who are sick to death of being condescended to by chirpy little 20-somethings from Macalester with poli sci degrees and “mushroom head” haircuts and resumes of short careers spent chasing DFL non-profit bucks.
For every Iron Ranger who’s tired of being told “stocking shelves at Shopko is just as good a career as mining, and all that money’s probably pretty bad for you, really” by Metro-area “environmentalists” in 2 million dollar houses in Kenwood.
I’m voting Republican because they are coming for your guns. Over the past couple years, they’ve felt emboldened enough to admit it. They’ll get ’em, not over my cold dead body, but over theirs.
I’m voting GOP because the DFL turned a blind eye to their contributors taking anvil cases of money out of the US, with (I believe the record will show) a nudge and a wink. The $250 million for “Feeding our Future” is just the beginning.
I’m voting Republican to tell Lisa Bender and every DFLer who believes as she does, “You’re right. Law and order is a privilege. And delivering on that “privilege” is one of government’s few unambiguously legitimate jobs, for which we pay the taxes and lend out the liberties we do.
I’m voting for every cancer patient who wishes they could have had a biopsy six months sooner, or isn’t alive to wish it. For the people whose health – physical and mental – was directly impacted by a state that treated bureaucratic prerogatives better than they treated science.
I’m voting for everyone with chronic pain – the cancer patients and accident victims and repeat-surgery patients with horrible chronic pain who can’t get the pain meds they need, since the same ham-fisted system that locked down the state also investigates and destroys the careers of doctors who give “too many” opioid prescriptions (in the view of some soulless bureaucrat) – while the DFL basks in the sickly glow of having “stuck it to Big Pharma” (while in many cases raking in big contributions from “Big Pharma”).
I’m voting Republican for everyone who’s sick of the DFL-dominated “Laptop class” getting rich on your backs.
I’m voting Republican for everyone who’s more than a little irked at the crude irony of people who vote for Keith Ellison calling Scott Jensen “too extreme for Minnesota”.
I’m voting Republican because I don’t want my granddaughter to have to pay for Joe Biden’s re-election spending spree, although I fear it’s too late.
I’m voting GOP for every kid that slowly lost interest in school, in learning – and in all too many cases, eventually in life itself.
I’m voting GOP for the owners of the my drugstore, my luthier, and every other store that got burned, looted or vandalized; every shopkeeper that had to spent their nights patrolling their stores – or figuring out how to clean up the wreckage.
I’m voting GOP for every parent that is sick of politicized school administrators and school-board politicians undercutting them, and for every parent who’s wondering why their schools just keep getting worse even as the price just keeps rising.
I’ll be doing it for everyone whose car got jacked, for every victim of everyone sprung onto the street by the Minnesota Freedom Fund or whiffleball DFL judges and prosecutors.
I’ll be doing it for every poor family scraping by wondering how they’re going to replace a catalytic converter on top of all the other bills and crap piling up these days.
I’m voting Republican because the shrapnel from Governor Walz’s hamfisted “state of emergency” was utterly. bitterly personal. I had to delay moving my mother – whose husband had just died, and was in a long-term care in North Dakota, pretty much alone – for months while the state worked out all its many mistakes in nursing homes. She was in a competently run state, so she didn’t catch Covid – but the months alone didn’t help one bit. And for that, I have a grudge. Oh, yes I do.
I’m voting GOP for everyone who’s sick to death of being gaslit by Hollywood, by Academia, the media and our own government, and isn’t going to take it anymore.
I’m voting Republican for the 13 soldiers and Marines who died in Afghanistan. Joe Biden wants them forgotten – but I will not.
I’m voting Republican because I read and have critical thinking skills.
I’m voting Republican because I can, and I’m going to keep it that way. Don’t tread on me.
