Unless something radically changes in the next several months, we will be looking at the election of Madame President. The organization Hillary Clinton has is way too strong for Trump to overcome with disciplined messaging and a few good debates – even if he could manage to accomplish those two goals. Whether Hillary manages to overcome her health challenges, or whether she is forced to withdraw, the Democrats will have the clear advantage on November 8th.

Many factors will have contributed to this result, but the primary factor will be the corrupt and dishonest Republican Party and their feckless “leadership”.

This massive failure has been in the works for years. It started accelerating in 2008 with the nomination of McCain, and continued with the nomination of Mitt Romney. Both men had admirable qualities and were on some level men of personal character. But their primary weaknesses were areas they shared with the Democrat nominee Barack Obama, so they couldn’t attack him on important issues that mattered to people. In addition to that, many people were swept up in the historic value of electing the first African-American president. That’s a tough challenge to overcome for a Republican nominee, even for a candidate that could paint in bold colors and articulate the “perceived” clear differences between the Republican Party and the Democrat Party – which they did not have in 2008 and 2012.

Even with that handicap, many Republicans, including myself, voted for the lesser of two evils because we couldn’t possibly vote for that scary socialist Marxist Obama guy. Anybody but Obama. Sound familiar? That’s because the Republican Party has been stuck on the same spinning hamster wheel of failure and refuses to learn from its mistakes. Why should they change? Why should they suddenly start paying attention to the people they claim to represent? After all, the average Republican doesn’t realize how stark the departure is from what we thought it represented as a party. We just keep voting for the Republicans because they are always way better than the Democrats. But are they really that much different? 2016 has proven that they are not.

This is the big picture – the Republicans are not who we thought they were, and it should matter to people who are still hanging with this political party after seeing what it has become.

This is my fault. I have enabled this party to keep serving up the same garbage every presidential election, because I kept voting for the “R” no matter who it was, and no matter how far from my principles and values the candidate happened to be. A majority of Republicans do exactly what I have done. For whatever reason, we had become convinced of the inherent goodness and superiority of the Republican Party over the Democrat Party. But I was wrong.  This party has gradually abandoned what it claims it stands for, and it’s time to acknowledge that and to claim political homelessness in 2016.

The Republican Party leadership (represented by Dictator Reince and his minions) has been completely hostile to conservatives, to their grassroots activists, and to any member who refuses to bow to their new Orange Leader. They claim to stand for the rule of law, and yet they seek to silence dissent in their ranks by bully tactics, which were clearly on display during the RNC Convention. I cannot condone the actions of this corrupt and dishonest party any longer, and after they officially abandoned all fiscal and social sanity with the nomination of Trump, that was my last straw.

I respect those who feel they need to vote for Trump to stop Hillary, but I’m still in the same place. Now more than ever, it’s important for me to take a stand against a candidate and a party that does not represent my principles and values.  So I will be voting for Evan McMullin, who is a indy presidential candidate on the ballot in SC, and a solid conservative in the House, Mick Mulvaney. Whether you vote for Trump or not, it might be wise to hold the Republican Party accountable for its lack of accountability to its membership, or we will be in the exact same place in four years. I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to go through this again.