A musing Beam

This is part of a series of posts on Election 2016 . Before I get deep into the details, I wanted to start with what I think the GOP is giving up by supporting Donald Trump. For the last few decades, certainly by the 1980’s, Republicans have tried to make themselves out to be the conservative party that believes in traditional ideals. What are those ideals?  They are generally a combination of a nostalgic view of 1950’s suburbia with evangelical Christianity.  Candidates should be truthful, consistent, faithful to their wives and family, loyal, patriotic, charitable, and of course they should be anti-abortion and strong Christians. And the candidates the GOP has put forward, starting with Ford, have always had some semblance of a claim to those characterizations (though of course nobody could really measure up to all of them in the ways often suggested).  Reagan, H.W. Bush, Dole, W. Bush, McCain, and Romney all built these personas. You could certainly challenge Reagan and

Note: This was originally posted a little over a week before election day. It is edited to have my list of posts in the series at the top: What the Republicans are giving up by supporting Trump Why Hillary’s conflates scandals are unconvincing Third party candidates are thin in policy and relevant experience and knowledge Trump flaw 1: Prejudice and courting the bigoted Trump flaw 2: Bullying and violence Trump flaw 3: No idea what he stands for, and he consistently lies Trump flaw 4: Foreign “policy” craziness Hillary’s virtues and why I'm with her Hello, all.  I haven’t blogged in some time, but I thought that this election season was too much to pass up.  I’ve written several posts, and I’m going to put out one a day for the next week or so.  I plan on coming back to this post to update it with links as I do. The overall idea behind these posts is why I voted for Hillary Clinton in this election, and why, to me, this was a positive decision and easy to make.  Aga