There is something almost esoteric about the importance most people attach to the fact that someone they know announces that they will change the direction of their expected vote.
When a Democrat turns pro-Trump or when a Republican announces that he will vote for Harris it is pretty clear what is going on: In the first case, he has been mugged by an illegal immigrant in his own home; in the second, it was not a good idea to mix whiskey with vodka and multi-colored pills.
If you think about it coldly, someone announcing a change of vote means nothing special, unless you believe that there has been a fall from the Pauline horse — something really supernatural — and that that person is now right and intelligent, after 40 years of defending nonsense with all conviction. This is not the norm. If politicians believed more in God, they would change the direction of their vote less and, perhaps, they would earn their living as pianists in a whorehouse, or at any other job more honest than politics. (READ MORE: On the Destructive Power of Cat-Eater Memes)
A politician’s announcement that, for the first time in his history, he will vote for the Democratic or Republican candidate says more about the politician than about the candidate. His interest is usually personal. Often: Skirting around within the party, failed attempts to place a son in a relevant office, or arguing over a parking space with some relative of the candidate.
If you think he has spent a whole week in his library, reading books on political theory, pondering the pros and cons of whatever candidate’s proposals, and trying to figure out which vote will be best for his nation, you’ve either lost your mind, or you’ve never seen a politician up close in your life.
I have read in newspapers around the world in thick headlines the news that Bush’s very Republican former Vice President Dick Cheney will endorse Kamala Harris. Good vintage whiskey, no doubt. Once upon a time “news” was information about something considered interesting to report. That the Cheneys won’t endorse Trump shouldn’t be news in 2024 when they’ve been tripping the former president up since at least 2016.
Over the past decade, Cheney has not been known for the strength of his endorsements, and his interventions in the public debate have been more to defend his stewardship in the past than to defend conservatives in the future. He harshly criticized Trump in February of 2016 accusing him of being like “a liberal Democrat,” and just two months later announced that he would support Trump, privately acknowledging that he was doing so to support his daughter Liz’s political career. This makes him a good father, perhaps, but a bad supporter. (READ MORE: Was It Worth the Empanadas?)
For the rest of it, Liz Cheney’s political career went to hell long ago, after colliding head-on with Donald Trump’s locomotive, so it would make no sense for them to support the former president now unless their principles were greater than their thirst for revenge. Only from a colossal binge of personal rancor can a conservative announce his vote for someone like Harris, a communist-abortionist-feminist storyteller.
I am sorry to tell you that I am not moved by the converts in the opposite direction either: the leaders of the Democratic party who now announce that they have become Trumpists. They are often driven by the same compass of self-interest.
And don’t think I’m criticizing people changing their minds, I do it about a thousand times a day. I just don’t think it’s an argument in favor of any candidate that an old glory of politics now decides when he has nothing left to lose, to change teams. The candidate and the proposals will be good or bad with or without the change of shirt of the last-minute converts.
In his brilliant analysis last Monday, Jeffrey Lord recounts that Republican Rep. John Anderson despised Reagan so much that, after losing the Republican nomination to him, “he formed a third party to carry the fight against Reagan into the fall election — and lost decisively.”
The only thing these self-serving conversions suggest to me is that we must fight harder and harder against professional politicians. We need more principled new blood who want to do good for their country, with a spirit of public service, and fewer people trying to form a six-generation family clan attached to the government teat and the goose that lays the golden eggs of politics. (RELATED: Liz Cheney and the Reason MAGA Voters Side with Trump)
We must put an end to those people who, in the delivery room, instead of hearing whether a boy or a girl has been born, the doctor tells them: “Congratulations, you have had a magnificent future member of the United States House of Representatives, healthy, and weighing eight pounds.”
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