Dear Ms. McDaniel: I Resign
The Republican Party no longer reflects my values, especially my value of Integrity (a.k.a., doing the right thing).
Dear Ms. McDaniel:
At the end of the day, I am a nobody. My resignation from the republican party at age fifty-three, after being a member since I first registered to vote when I was eighteen years old will not cause concern within the ranks of the party because I am not a well-known member of the party, have no sway over public opinion as a writer or television pundit and do not hold a high-profile elected office position. In fact, I haven’t held an elected position since I was the Student Union president of my university in 1989. I am not resigning because I do not support President Trump. However, I do not support him because he doesn’t reflect my Absolute Values of Ownership, Transparency, Humility, and Authenticity. Before he was elected, I would ask my friends who supported him a simple question: “Would you enter into a business deal with him”. Not surprisingly, I never received a single answer in the affirmative. He would throw any of his supporters in Congress under the bus in an instant if it benefited him, and the whole party knows it.
I am resigning because I, like many millions of people in my soon to be former party are saddened and disgusted with watching republican representatives and senators check their values at the door when they walk into Congress in favor of their own political futures. I have a saying I coined when I was CEO of a company recently: “I don’t care about my job”. The message it was intended to send was that the day I started making decisions based on self-preservation, was the day I that I would be making decisions based on what was good for me, not for the company I was running.
My decision to resign has been years in the making and I will not be joining the Democratic party because their leaders have shown the same lack of backbone many times in the past. I will become an Independent because that word alone, better reflects the way I think and also the type of thinking that elected officials should employ. Elected officials in my soon to be former party should be embarrassed that they have lost their ability to be independent and objective thinkers. Dictionary.com defines independent as “Not influenced or controlled by others in matters of opinion, conduct, etc; thinking or acting for oneself”. I am becoming an Independent because, to me, the term is reflective of the fact that I will vote based on what I think is best for my country, not for political reasons.
It took courage for me to register as a Republican when I turned eighteen. My father and mother’s families were working-class Italian-Americans and predominantly democrats. When I was seventeen my father was only the second Democrat in the history of our county to ever be elected judge for the Court of Common Pleas in Lawrence County, Pa, which was founded in 1849, and the FIRST Italian-catholic. Achieving this was a big deal for the democrats in my county and I can remember my father having one of his friends over to our home for a visit to try and talk me out of becoming a republican. In my thirties, I supported a Republican for the office of Mayor in our city, New Castle, PA. I supported him in instead of the very people who helped get my father elected and took a lot of heat for it in the community, and I didn’t even know the candidate prior to helping him, I just knew he could make a difference. I tell you these stories, Ms. McDaniel, because, while they certainly don’t qualify for the next edition of Profiles in Courage, there are probably millions of stories just like these from people who vote for Republican candidates not because they are against democrats, liberalism, Hillary Clinton, etc, but because the people they vote for are reflective of their values.
I have been thinking about resigning for years and becoming an Independent but watching some of my political heroes such as Paul Ryan and Lindsey Graham care more about their jobs than doing the right thing really pushed me over the edge. John McCain is rolling over in his grave.
I don’t want President Trump to be removed from office. I want, and believe that he will be voted out of office by the “Millions in the Middle” who want a president that puts our country before his own self-interest. We “Millions in the Middle” who identify more with the courage of our Founding Fathers than with the lack of courage currently being exhibited by Republican senators and representatives will vote them out as well because we put it on the line every day and want officials in Congress to do the same when something is clearly right or wrong. When it’s not clear, we just want them to work together.
Please accept my resignation, effective immediately.
Sincerely,
