Hundreds of prominent members of the old Republican Party have announced they
are either voting for Kamala Harris or, at least, that they will not vote for the GOP 
candidate Donald Trump in this year's general election. These people include several former Republican Vice Presidents, cabinet officials, Members of Congress, and even a number of prominent members of the last Trump administration. This dramatic turn of events reflects the type of change in voter alignment with party ideology that occurs
when there is a major shift in the "system" of American political parties. There have been six commonly accepted party systems over the course of American history. In his new book What Makes a Great President, author Stephen Tryon argues that we have been living in a seventh party system for the past thirty years, that today's Republican Party no longer reflects the values of the traditional GOP, and that the change is a threat to the lawful processes that have guided the American Republic for two-hundred and thirty-five years. The book is available on Amazon and at barnesandnoble.com.

It is particularly important to make sure your voter registration is rock solid in this election year. As this NPR article points out, Alabama has illegally purged voters too close to the election. So check to make sure your registration is in good standing. That is certainly important in Alabama, but it is probably also quite important in other states... especially swing states like Arizona, Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Nevada and Georgia where pro-Trump officials are either under investigation or facing indictments for a plot to ceritfy fake electors.

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​If you vote for candidates based on their party affiliation rather than on their character or their stance on specific issues, it may be the case that your perception of what the parties stand for is out of date.  Political scientists generally agree on six distinct "party systems" across the history of the United States, and each of these party systems reflects changes in the names of the parties, or in the alignment of the parties with the major issues of their era, or both. In my new book What Makes a Great President, I describe the evolution of the six historical party systems and defend the proposition that, because of the deregulation of television and radio and the explosion of information technology, we have been living in a seventh party system for about thirty years. The character of the parties under this new system is dramatically different. If you are voting based on an idea of party identity that you inherited from your parents, or that you remember from before around 1994, then it is likely that you are voting for something that no longer exists.



WHAT YOU SEE IS NOT WHAT YOU GET
We all know that elections are close. Parties compete for power and they cater to interest groups that reflect small fractions of the population. The Republican Party has essentially split between extremists and traditionalists. To a large degree, the extremists have pushed out the traditionalists. That is why hundreds of prominent conservatives have either refused to endorse Trump in the 2024 election or have openly stated they will vote for the Democratic candidate to help prevent Trump from winning in the 2024 election. Who is left supporting the Republican candidate? Extremists, those who remain affiliated with the Republican Party through an outdated sense of what that party stands for, people who are captured by one type of news program (like Fox News) that promotes stories based on what those stories do for ratings rather than on their truth value, and people who are afraid of being bullied with terms like "RINO", "Woke" and "Libtard" if they go against what their social circle promotes as "patriotic". The description of the evolution of the seventh party system in my book provides a more detailed look at how the Republican Party has changed over time. For simplicity in this post, I will simply close by noting that some of the extremists who have identified with the modern Republican Party are former grand wizard of the Ku Klux Klan David Duke and terrorist Timothy McVeigh (executed for murdering 168 people* and injuring over 500 others by bombing the federal building in Oklahoma City in 1995). In the coming election, failure to vote empowers the extremists. And voting for the Republican candidate is a vote for the racist, white nationalist, and anarchist agenda of people like Timothy McVeigh and David Duke. That is why hundreds of prominent conservatives are refusing to support the Republican candidate for president in 2024.

*including 19 children

Take some time right now and make a plan to vote on election day!  You can search for "election day 2024" to get a list of all the applicable deadlines for your location. And you can confirm that you are registered to vote at this link.

Please check your voter registration status at https://www.nass.org/can-I-vote. It is very easy to do--a screenshot of my voter registration status is attached for your reference. Here is a link to a national service for checking your registration. The url is ​https://www.nass.org/can-I-vote