Republican voters gather for their precinct caucus in West Des Moines on February 1, 2016. Photo by K. Farabaugh/VOA, available via Wikimedia Commons.
Henry Jay Karp is the Rabbi Emeritus of Temple Emanuel in Davenport, Iowa, which he served from 1985 to 2017. He is the co-founder and co-convener of One Human Family QCA, a social justice organization.
Recently, someone suggested that I attend a Republican caucus on January 15 in order to vote for someone other than Donald Trump. Their suggestion was born out of a sincere fear that should Trump win the Republican nomination and general election, it would mark the end of democracy in the United States as we know it—a fear I wholeheartedly share.
Now you may ask: How can I, a devout and registered Democrat, vote in a Republican caucus? Actually, it is quite easy. All one need do is show up at the caucus site and register that night as a Republican.
In fact, I have done so in the past, but for different reasons.
As the radical right was gaining strength in the Iowa GOP, there were some moderate Republican office holders whom our community appreciated for their commitment to placing the interests of the people over that of their party. Their voter base included many Democrats, such as myself. As long as there was no seriously contested race on the Democratic side, I would cross over and support these worthy elected officials in their primary against radicalized Republicans.
But when asked to do it this time, I demurred. Why? For several reasons:
First off, this is a presidential election. There is no way a public figure and known advocate of social justice like me can walk into a Republican caucus unnoticed in a state which has drunk the Trump Kool Aid of hate and oppression of minorities. I have no intention of doing anything that would feed the “stolen election” lie.
Secondly, if the GOP is to be saved from falling into the pit of fascism, it has to be up to members of the Republican Party to save it. For years now, we have been watching in dismay as the truly patriotic Republican office holders, such as the ones I occasionally voted for, have literally been driven out of their party or at least pushed into a corner of silence. Now is the time for members of the Republican Party to choose between loving their country or loving absolute power. But, truth be told, I have little hope they will choose the country over power.
That brings us to the third reason I will not caucus with Republicans tonight. At this stage of the race, not one presidential hopeful truly stands against Trumpism. Anyone who called Trump out for wanting to be a dictator has dropped out of the race, former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie being the most recent example.
The rest of them may be nominally running against Trump, but they continue to bow at his feet. None have had the courage to call him out for any one of his many misdeeds and his grievous offenses against the republic, after which their party is named. Even if any of them were so fortunate as to get nominated and elected, their administration would simply be Trumpism 2.0.
Fourth, I believe that if Republicans nominate Trump for president again, this election will be the ultimate test of where the American people stand on the future of our democracy. If Trump were elected, his return to the White House would be a profound and frightening testament to a radical change in American values. It would say more about the American people than Trump himself. It would say the U.S. is no longer the nation that proudly declares, as it states on our money, “E Pluribus Unum – Out of Many, One.”
We would no longer be a country that values and takes pride in our diversity, but rather a nation that embraces a supremacist ideology, embracing the superiority of one race over all others, of one religion over all others, of one sexual orientation and gender identity over all others, one ethnicity over all others, males over females, rich over poor, the privileged over underprivileged, the able over the disabled. The U.S. would become a land that takes pride in the power of the oppressor over the oppressed.
That would no longer be my country. Each of us would need to decide whether it would be theirs.
The November 2024 election may very well be the most important election in U.S. history.
3 Comments
hope no Dems go to that COVID superspreader event
another Make America Great Again pitch, when was this shining era? here is MLK in 67′
“Ever since the birth of our nation, White America has had a schizophrenic personality on the question of race. She has been torn between selves: one in which she proudly professes the great principle of democracy, and another in which she madly practices the antithesis of democracy. This tragic duality has produced a strange indecisiveness and ambivalence toward the Negro, causing America to take a step backward simultaneously with every step forward on the question of racial justice. It is a state of being at once attracted to the Negro and repelled by him, to love and to hate him.
There has never been a solid, unified, and determined thrust to make justice a reality for Afro-Americans.
The step backward has a new name today; it is called the white backlash, but the white backlash is nothing new. It is the surfacing of old prejudices, hostilities, and ambivalences that have always been there. It was caused neither by the cry of black power nor by the unfortunate recent wave of riots in our cities. The white backlash of today is rooted in the same problem that has characterized America ever since the black man landed in chains on the shores of this nation.
This does not imply that all White Americans are racist; far from it. Many white people have, through a deep moral compulsion, fought long and hard for racial justice. Nor does it mean that America has made no progress in her attempt to cure the body politic of the disease of racism or that the dogma of racism has not been considerably modified in recent years. However, for the good of America, it is necessary to refute the idea that the dominant ideology in our country, even today, is freedom and equality, while racism is just an occasional departure from the norm on the part of a few bigoted extremists.”
dirkiniowacity Mon 15 Jan 3:07 PM
Per the last three paragraphs of the essay, there is also the serious question...
…of whether this nation will embrace the superiority of present Americans over future Americans. Climate change and other environmental issues are partly a test of how much we as a nation really care about our children, grandchildren, and descendants. Electing Donald Trump again would answer that question, horribly.
PrairieFan Mon 15 Jan 9:52 PM
hall of mirrors
MAGA folks care a great deal about the future of their kids and all but their cognitive biases warp their understandings of what is happening and so what will happen,
and the biases of most of our press (local and national) keep them from making the connection that it makes little sense to treat such deluded people as reasonable and informed actors capable of good decisions, so round and round we go down the bowl. Iowa is home to one of the few environments (soil, temps, etc) capable of producing abundant crops (Ukraine being another and part of why it has been occupied so many times) in the whole world and it is a world historical disaster how we are wrecking it, and of course we are a part of the carbon-fuel pipeline, so one can only hope the Feds bail us (and as you note future generations) out and that the elected Dems stand up to the Court that Gressley and co. built. It’s an incredibly long shot but the only one we have…
dirkiniowacity Tue 16 Jan 12:50 PM