Letter: Republicans, vote your conscience

Republicans, this year don’t vote Republican. Vote your conscience.

When five good guys with a gun are assassinated in Dallas by a bad guy with a gun, you can clearly criticize your party leaders’ position on supporting weapons of war being available to the public.

You and I know the donor class is drowning out our voices. We are not being heard. Republican leaders continue to hammer “conservative values,” a meaningless phrase to most of us because those values do not represent our needs. But they do represent what their donor class wants: no regulations, whether they be gun control or climate change, for example.

Conservative leaders want to privatize or eliminate Social Security and Medicare. Democratic leaders want to preserve and shore up these programs. The Republican presidential nominee is a wild card. It is hard to know if he will keep his promises if he were to win. He cannot bring back jobs lost to globalization and technology.

If you must vote Republican, then please consider those candidates who will stand for what you need. Otherwise vote for a candidate who is most aligned with your needs, not some ideal that will not help you. (I believe the Democratic platform represents what we all need.) Do this not only for you but your children and the rest of the country. Don’t continue to shoot yourself — and along the way the rest of us — in the foot, or much worse.

This story was originally published July 22, 2016 at 1:18 PM with the headline "Letter: Republicans, vote your conscience."