FT. HENRY, FLORIDA — David Berkeley is a 45-year-old who describes himself as “fiscally conservative and socially a little less moderate” and he has been a member of the Republican Party since he was 18 and his father set him down with a voter registration card and told him, “Son, only commies, gays, and lovers of commie gays vote Democrat,” and he hastily checked the “Republican” box on his form.
For the entire time he’s been able to vote, he’s been a Republican and he says that he’s never had any problem voting for any of them. “I really liked Bob Dole,” he told us, “and even when McCain chose Sarah Palin as his running mate, I still managed to vote for him because it was better than putting a Democrat in office.” However, he says that up until very recently he couldn’t figure out if he would be able to vote for Donald J. Trump, the billionaire former-reality TV star and current GOP front runner for the 2016 presidential nomination because even though he calls himself conservative, he still doesn’t believe in judging people based on their religious beliefs.
“I was raised by my parents and taught in school to respect the separation of church and state because it was a rather ingenious bit of legislation that had managed to keep America from erupting into a full blown holy war for over 200 years,” Berkeley told our interviewer, “so Trump’s anti-Islamic rhetoric really turned me off, even as a Republican.
“I was really not sure what I was going to do. I didn’t necessarily want to vote for Donald Trump, but years of listening to Rush Limbaugh and Fox News hosts has taught me that voting for a Democrat is the worst thing you can do for America, even one that is pretty hawkish, very pro-big business, and ultimately what a Republican looked like 50 years ago. So I figured any Republican — even Donald Trump — is better than someone whose only real transgression is that they’re a Democrat.”
Mr. Berkeley told our reporter that he plans to “hold [his] nose and pull the lever for Trump” if he’s the nominee. “I mean, I’m not Muslim. I’m not Mexican. I’m not LGBT,” he says he realized about himself, and that he’d “maybe feel bad for those groups if Trump was elected,” but that he would “really just be happy it wasn’t a Democrat.” He said keeping a Democrat out of the White House, as a Republican, “is far more important than keeping a fascist, b-level talent jerk out.”
“Freedom means electing fascists from time to time if it means keeping Democrats out of the White House,” Berkeley said. It’s of “vital importance that all Republican voters remember” that keeping Democrats out of the presidency is “far more important than things like justice or a fair shake,” Berkeley stated as fact. He said “liberal progressives think that helping the poor is done by helping them and not turning your back on them so they can find their magical bootstraps like we all did,” and that he said is “tantamount to burning the Constitution and smoking the ashes.”
David is actually hoping he never has to vote for Trump, and that the establishment allows him to vote for a “traditional Republican who hides his phobias and fear mongering in flowery language and prose” instead of “blasting it out into the ether” as Trump does. “Look, I’m not really sure he’s even going to be the nominee,” Berkeley said, “after all, Ted Cruz is looking like he could swoop in, and it’s not like him agreeing with Donald Trump on everything will taint him in the general election, right? Right?”
Then, after a long moment of contemplation about Cruz, Trump, and his party’s entire field of candidates, Berkeley let out a small sigh and said quietly, “Oh dear, we’re fucked.”
