Don't Hold Your Vote Just Yet.

Not voting in certain races only helps our opposition.

With the disappointing midterms winding down, the GOP base is seemingly splintered between choosing President Trump’s leadership or his more establishment-friendly counterpart, Ron DeSantis. There is a growing portion of the right that continue to advocate for refraining from voting if the candidate in question is not authentically running on America First ideals. The vote counts from the election show that Trump’s base doesn’t show up for people who aren’t Trump himself. The theory goes that without this abundance of right-wing voters participating, the establishment will be forced into running better candidates. This is not meant to countersignal the movement, as I 100% agree that one of our top priorities is to finish draining the swamp. At the same time, there are flaws with this line of thinking that lead me to believe there may be better alternatives to pulling the plug at this moment.

The number one reason I would have preferred for us to get out and vote down ballot R is that it would have given Trump an edge when he assumes office again. Our house majority will stop some of Biden’s plotting, but we want to be fully functioning when it is once again our turn to helm the mantle. When Trump is on the ballot again, we will need to fight multiple kinds of races on multiple fronts if we hope to accomplish our legislative goals. The states in play for 2024 do seem to be favorable for us, but modern electioneering cannot confirm that. The only midterm analysis that really matters is that the art of ballot harvesting will never allow us to win an election again. We are more susceptible to fraud, yes, but the real nail in the coffin is the GOP’s lack of infrastructure. Our party leaders knew exactly which swing states would still be holding sketchy elections and did nothing to prepare in both the funding and ballot-collecting departments. The redpill is that Republican leadership does not care about winning. Refraining from voting would be as effective as shouting at a brick wall. McConnell and McCarthy cared more about stomping out the Trump revolution than they did stopping the Biden regime. Why would they actively contribute to outsiders who would immediately vote to replace them? Our party leaders, and especially the donor class, see an authentic right wing party in America as a threat to their grasp on power. This would be a threat even stronger than their literal opposition, as we want to clean rank and file. They can afford to live under the Democrats’ rule, but the working class people we claim to represent cannot hold out forever.

On top of the lack of a will to win, continuously not voting would more likely than not lead to the party moving left as a whole. We have only one viable party to run good candidates, and throwing it away may result in us never getting it back. There is a real reason the communists preferred infiltration of our institutions in comparison to an all out war for them. That takes time of course, but it has been proven to be successful. We can slip in a select few Paul Gosars and J.D. Vances in certain races, but the political party essentially picks and chooses its players. As stated earlier, the GOP’s inherent bias is to shift left whenever something is not working out. A lack of an authentic right-leaning voting block would likely have the opposite effect in having democrat lite be our branding. This would naturally shift the Overton window back to the left, resulting in our authentic candidates not being able to hold onto their seats either. I also doubt we would hold much relevance in the culture without adequate progress at the decision desk. Look at the libertarian voters, aka the other group that throws our party under the bus only to never have their demands met.

At the end of the day, we want the best quality of life possible. Every individual has their own way of looking at how that can be made possible, but the tribalism of politics cannot be ignored either. I personally don’t ever see myself taking the sideline if I have the opportunity to screw over the party that hates me for my religion and skin color. You can definitely make the argument that the GOP has similar feelings, but the lesser of two evils is by definition the best choice. If we did manage to wait out the establishment and have them start to run good candidates by default, who’s to say we would even have half the chance at a fair election? Nothing in our culture has trended to the right and no institutions have been reclaimed. A hard cultural swing to the right, especially in this polarizing battle of good and evil, will not happen on its own.

It wouldn’t be right to sit here without giving viable solutions, but thankfully they do exist. Running anti-establishment candidates was and still is our best short-term bet in my opinion, but the party refused to fund the strongest ones, prematurely dooming them. This means we once again need to look at political outsiders to be the face of our fight. Encouraging every vaguely right-leaning celebrity or notable public figure to seek office is not the worst idea we’ve ever had. We know that politicians themselves do not make most of their decisions or rhetoric. There are more campaign managers for hire than ever before, and some of them (I would like to think) are competent. Fundraising without relying on the party is the real trick, adding more weight to the argument that political outsiders are the right choice for running the best candidates. They are exciting to the electorate, don’t necessarily have to suck up to any man by default, and will have a leg up in the campaign trail due to their status. Ballot harvesting on both sides will now make or break elections for us, and that is where we should be allocating our resources if we want America First values and ideals to continue taking over Congress and thus the culture. Once Trump’s second term is completed, assuming we have no viable candidates, we can have the talk about not participating as a way to stand up to the powers that be. As for now, our energy needs to be on setting up 2024 to be the return of the king in all his former glory.