Don’t you just love primaries? It’s a time when people who generally get along just fine turn into Yankees and Red Sox fans on a bender during the playoffs. It’s not fun to be around, and it’s not all that much fun to be a part of. Unless it’s happening to Democrats, of course, in which case you root for as long of a fight as possible. But this year it’s not happening to Democrats, at least not yet, it’s happening to Republicans, and there’s a better than average chance it’ll screw up the country going forward.
Let me start by pointing out that I will vote for whoever the Republican nominee is in the 2024 election. That goes for the top of the ticket down to dog catcher. I don’t care who it is, they’ve got my vote over any Democrat. It’s really not hard to say, easier still to mean, but far too many people on our team are rabidly insisting they will not vote for anyone other than their chosen candidate.
I’ve even seen many people claim if their particular candidate does not win the nomination that the “party rigged the process” and they’d stay home in the general election. While I suspect most don’t mean it, it’s one of the dumbest things anyone can say considering the stakes in the next election.
Claims of cheating, claims of rigging are all moronic. First off, Donald Trump picked the chairwoman of the party, would he really support someone repeatedly for that position who’d cheat against him? He hired some bad people but not three different times.
The Ron DeSantis loyalists aren’t quite as hell-bent on staying home, but they are seemingly on board with burning down as much as possible in order to get their way. Trump has his weaknesses and failings, but every candidate with an “R” after their name is better than Joe Biden, even Asa Hutchinson, though just barely.
Honestly, if you can’t see yourself being able to vote for another Republican simply because they defeated the candidate you’d tattooed on your arm, get the hell over it. Some candidates are obviously better than others, but if your loyalty is to a person and not principles – and I mean this in the nicest way possible – you’re an idiot.
There isn’t a single candidate running for office anywhere who is loyal to you unless you’re a match as an organ donor and they’re in urgent need. None of them know who you are, nor do they give a damn.
No candidate is perfect, none are even all that close. Some have better campaigning skills than others, and some excel at articulating a vision than others do. But every single one of them is better than any Democrat, and defeating Democrats should be the first priority.
Yes, there are some candidates I like better than others on the issues I prioritize, but there isn’t a candidate alive who will do everything they say they will, or be able to get half of what they promise even introduced in Congress, let alone passed. The most any of us can hope for legislatively is “some” of what we’d love an administration to do.
However, what the country absolutely needs more than anything else is for things to stop being made worse. Democrats make everything worse, preventing that has to be the priority. Fixing things can only happen once they stop getting worse. And ultimately, I don’t care who the Republican is who does it.
While it’s tempting to hitch your wagon to a person, and there’s a weird pride in going down with a ship, it’s idiotic to rule out any other outcome than the one you want. Children do that, adults don’t.
I can’t say it doesn’t matter who wins the nomination – some candidates have built themselves a much steeper climb in the general than others have, but one of them must reach the summit and for that to happen everyone is going to have to get on board.
Campaign hard, sharpen your elbows, but recognize that your candidate can’t get there without the people you think are dead wrong and stupid, and their candidate can’t get there without you. Ultimately, if you really do want to win, it doesn’t matter who crosses the goal line for your team. At least it shouldn’t. Maybe everyone once in a while we should all take a breath and recognize that.
Derek Hunter is the host of a free daily podcast (subscribe!) and author of the book, Outrage, INC., which exposes how liberals use fear and hatred to manipulate the masses, and host of the weekly “Week in F*cking Review” podcast where the news is spoken about the way it deserves to be. Follow him on Twitter at @DerekAHunter.