Voting in a Republican Primary.

Next month there will be primaries here in Alabanana, and I’ll vote in the Republican one. I surely won’t end up voting for Republicans in the general election, because they don’t represent the values of good government, but in the primary I will try to vote for some more moderate or at least less-incendiary folks.

While I’ve generally voted in Democratic primaries, with a few exceptions over the years, and almost exclusively voted for Democrats (with a few undervotes) in general elections, I don’t think Democrats need my input in primaries, where the Republicans clearly do.

Democratic primaries here either get it right or wrong. In 2022, they nominated someone with no business running for governor, what I call a vanity candidate. People who run for higher office without ever having won an election are either vanity candidates or they are publicity candidates that have some specific issue to raise (e.g., a perceived wrong by a particular corporation).

Donald John Trump was a vanity candidate, of course. Sometimes they win nominations, and that’s only a general election away from someone with no ability being in an office. That’s usually a bad idea, and at least sometimes a catastrophe.

The main problem with voting in a Republican primary is the candidates are too busy trying to “out-seg” each other. They no longer rave about racist segregation as George Wallace once did, but they take up whichever modern equivalent is in vogue. Anti-woke, anti-Muslim, anti-transgender, anti-matter.

It’s mostly impossible to tease-out a moderate choice, to try to move that ruinous party back toward reality. And this year proves no different there. Leaning heavy on irrelevant experience, here’s when they got their picture taken with Donald John Trump. America-first. Calling up issues that aren’t relevant for the office they’re actually running for.

There are some dozen races in all to deal with, and I’d guess at least three will repeat on us. But that’s the system we have. I figure the Republican party didn’t get unreasonable by reasonable folks voting in their primaries, so it sure can’t hurt.

There are two big-ticket items this time: governor and senator. Tommy Tuberville seems a shoe-in for the gubernatorial nomination, despite being a Floridian. Maybe he’ll get sued out of the race, so the lieutenant governor race may turn out more important assuming they would bump that candidate up if Tuberville gets bumped from the ballot. There’s only one alternative to him running for the nomination for governor, so that’s an easy choice.

The senate race is probably more important, given that whoever gets in may last awhile. There are limited options there once you drop the vanity and publicity candidates. The good news is that it mostly won’t matter who I vote for in the first round, because it’ll go to a run-off election. (The lieutenant governor race probably will as well.)

In the end, the voting is what counts. You should register: vote.gov. Even if your primaries are done, or you’re reading this ten years in the future, you should do your part and vote!