Engaging as a Voter When Ideals Clash with Reality

Are conservative voters facing a dilemma when their only choices are a Republican with Democratic leanings or simply not casting a ballot at all? Prepare to navigate this complex political landscape with me, Julie Barrett, on the Womansplaning Podcast. We’re dissecting a striking poll that lays bare the inner turmoil of the Republican Party, where loyalties are split, and the concept of 'BETTA' candidates—those deemed Better Than The Alternative—comes into sharp focus. As we approach another heated election season, understanding why some voters might opt for established candidates over newcomers can illuminate much about our current political climate.

This episode goes beyond the voting booth, underscoring the indispensable role of civic engagement in shaping our democracy. From the local legislative skirmishes that could gradually shift the balance of power, to the broader implications of citizen involvement in policy-making, we're tackling how your proactive participation can make a tangible difference. You'll be prompted to consider the power of holding elected officials to account, ensuring they accurately represent the people who put them in office. Tune in for an empowering discussion that’s sure to leave you informed and motivated to take on your role in the democratic process with vigor and purpose.

Chapters

• 0:00 Republican vs. Democrat Voting Strategy
• 10:30 Importance of Citizen Engagement in Elections

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

Out of curiosity, I did a poll on X, formally known as Twitter, over the weekend and I asked people if their choices on the ballot were between a Democrat and a Republican, who very closely aligned with Democrat priorities, who would they vote for, or would they just not vote at all? And I was very surprised at the results of this poll today and I want to talk about it with you, and I want to talk about what we need to do going into this election season. Hi, I'm Julie Barrett and you're listening to the Women's Planing Podcast, where we tackle one of today's hot topics in the conservative world. I'm also the founder of Conservative Ladies of America, which started in Washington state as Conservative Ladies of Washington. We are an organization of like-minded ladies and gentlemen who are working hard to encourage, empower, educate and equip citizens to stand up, speak up and take real action in their local community, their state and even on a national level. You can learn more about our organization, the work that we're doing, how you can get involved and how you can support us by heading over to our website, conservativeladiesofamericacom. That's conservativeladiesofamericacom.

Speaker 1: 1:28

As I did this poll on X over the weekend, a lot of my followers out of my former home state of Washington thought I was speaking specifically to the Washington governor's race, which there's a lot of drama surrounding that race. There are a couple of Republican candidates, one that is seen as the more establishment choice and the other who is a more conservative Republican and kind of known as the grassroots choice. There's a lot of emotion surrounding this race. The poll was not about that particular race. Now that I live in Florida, I can tell you that we here in conservative Florida have some of these same types of issues going on, where you have what people might perceive as the rhino candidate and the conservative or the MAGA candidate, both on the ballot. There's a lot of emotion on the Republican side between candidates that are perceived as rhinos and those that are perceived as the conservative or grassroots choice. I see this all over the country and, as we're heading into election season and just kind of observing a lot of the emotion that is tied up in a lot of these races across the country, I was curious If your choices on the ballot are between a Democrat or a Republican who aligns very closely with Democrat policies, which one are you going to choose, or are you just not going to vote at all?

Speaker 1: 3:14

I was quite surprised that overwhelmingly 57.7% of respondents said that they just wouldn't vote, 40% said that they would vote for the so-called Republican and then just 2.3% said that they would pick the Democrats. I'm a little bit torn on that because, on the one hand, I think, well, if I vote for the Democrat, at least I know what I'm getting. But if I vote for the person that calls themselves a Republican, but their policies that they've outlined really align closely with the Democrat party, at least maybe I have an opportunity to influence the way that person is going to govern and make policy. So I think, if I were responding to this poll, I would say I would vote for the so-called Republican. I don't think that not voting is an option, and when we went through the 2022 election cycle, my husband termed the that there is the BETA candidate. Betta, which is the Better Than the Alternative candidate, or the lesser of two evils. I think better than the alternative is a nicer way to put it. But that is true is that you are, you're going to have to make a choice, and one is probably less bad than the other.

Speaker 1: 4:43

In a case where you've got essentially two Democrats on the ballot, you maybe have, you know a hard leftist or a moderate Democrat that you could pull to the right, and I think it's a good opportunity for us as conservatives, as citizens who are concerned about the kind of policymaking. It's a good opportunity for us to be able to influence the the policymaking. And it would be a good opportunity for citizens to say, okay, we're going to vote for this person even though it doesn't look like they really align with us on very much. But maybe we can influence this person once they're elected. Maybe we can influence them to make policy vote on policy that that we like or don't like. Maybe we can get them over to our our side of things. And so I think that, as discouraging as it may be to see that on your ballot, I think it's a good spin to see it as an opportunity.

Speaker 1: 5:54

And, of course, in a state like Florida, on my ballot I'm going to have probably my so called Republican, a conservative Republican and a Democrat. So I'm going to have different choices than, say, someone in Western Washington that's a very deep blue area of the country or New York or California. So if you're in a red state, your, your ballot choices are going to be a little bit different and you probably are going to be choosing between an actual conservative Republican and a more moderate Republican. I know here in my legislative district on the House side, we have the candidate who's been in office I'm not sure how many terms he's been in office, but he's running for reelection and then there is a more MAGA candidate that is challenging him. I imagine that there will be a Democrat also on the ballot, because Democrats are pretty good about making sure that they don't leave any positions without a candidate on the ballot. So I'm sure there will be a Democrat on my ballot.

Speaker 1: 6:59

But my choices will obviously be between the establishment or the incumbent Republican and I don't really know enough about him to say if he is more of an establishment type candidate. But I know that the person challenging him seems to think that he is and the challenger is a more MAGA candidate and I personally would go with the incumbent because I can look at that person's record and I can see well he votes the way I would want him to. You know 90 plus percent of the time, and that's good. Otherwise, I'm, you know, taking a gamble with this MAGA candidate that I really don't know anything about them. I don't know what their experience is? They don't really seem to have experience. They just seem to have more conservative values, which I think is a good thing, but doesn't necessarily translate into the lawmaking process. So sometimes there you're. You know, even with having two Republicans, you might want to go with the one that you know is kind of a known entity sort of, on that kind of works on both sides of this issue. But I don't think that you know the fact that 57.7 percent of people said that. You know 430 people responded to this poll and 57.7 percent of them said that they just wouldn't vote.

Speaker 1: 8:25

Now, in a place like Western Washington or basically the whole West Coast, you might have on most of your ballot positions you might have a Democrat and a Republican light or you know they're calling themselves a Republican but they're really a moderate Democrat. And if you want to start pulling, shifting the needle away from that far left cliff, you're going to have to, you know, make some compromises and go with the more squishy moderate Republican and grab and gradually start shifting, you know, the needle back to the right. It's not going to happen in one election. You're not going to go from a radical left person incumbent and turn that into a conservative. I just don't see where that would happen.

Speaker 1: 9:20

I think that it's going to be like we've seen the Democrats do, where slowly over time, they have shifted things to the left, and it's been such a gradual shift that most people haven't noticed it. They're just like back when Bill Clinton was in office and I didn't vote for Bill Clinton. I wasn't voting yet, but I would have considered myself a Bill Clinton Democrat. I think there's a lot of people like that from back in the 90s, when Bill Clinton was in office, democrats were a lot more moderate than they are today and that's just been a gradual shift over the decades. And now we look at it and we're like, wow, how did they get here? And a lot of people who don't really pay attention to politics really haven't and maybe aren't even aware of how radical left the Democrats are, and so we're going to have to take that same approach. We're going to have to slow walk it back to the right. We're not going to go from one extreme to the other overnight and I don't think that extreme on either side is a good thing.

Speaker 1: 10:30

But I think you know, in regards to this, this poll and people thinking like, well, if I don't have a conservative choice, I'm just not going to vote. Well, number one you are. You know you have a duty. As a citizen, you have a privilege, a right and a duty to vote, and if we're going to sit it out, we don't have any room to complain about what's going on if we're not even willing to vote, and one of these people is going to get elected, and I think if we could keep it from going off the left cliff, I think that is a huge, a huge step in the right direction, and we know that voter turnout is really low and so we really need to work at getting citizens in the habit in the practice of voting.

Speaker 1: 11:21

And I know that in Washington and a lot of other places around the country, a lot of voters feel very disenfranchised. They feel like their vote doesn't count, and I don't blame you at all, and in Washington, I felt the exact same way but I also don't see how we get out of the mess that we're in without voting our way out. I really do believe that we need we need kind of that that landslide that we had in 2016 with Trump, where they didn't expect all those people to come out in massive numbers like they did and vote for Trump. We need that same sort of landslide voting to overwhelm the system so that they can't compensate for it. And in places like Washington and many other states, the Democrats have, you know, since 2016, they have passed a number of different policies to keep the elections tipped. Keep the scale tipped in their favor, if you will. So the only way to change that is to vote, and in a state where you have a Democrat majority, well, you're going to have to shift the power to the other side or at least get it a little bit more balanced if you're going to change some of these policies and I believe that it is a lot easier to get wins on a local legislative district level than it is at a state level and so these, if you're voting for, say, a so-called Republican for a state house representative seat, that's a two-year term, right. So if you get somebody that's a little bit more towards the middle than the radical leftist that's there now, then two years from now, maybe you can get another candidate that's maybe a little bit even more to the right than the last one that you had. So I think that we have to look at this as a long game, not just as one election, because it's going to take decades to shift the tide from where it is now, especially in these blue states.

Speaker 1: 13:38

And another thing that I've noticed since I've been involved at a policy level, which this was the third session that I've been engaged and active in influencing legislative policy 2022 was my first year, and then 23 and then 24 this year and one of the things that I have noticed is candidates don't really talk about policy and lawmaking. They kind of give their motivational speech and they get everybody excited and they get everybody bought into their promises, but they don't really talk about policy. And I think we have a really unique opportunity here, as voters and citizens, to question candidates, whether they are incumbent or they are a new candidate. We should be asking them about different policy. Bring up policies that passed in your legislative session this year to candidates and ask them what are your thoughts on this policy? How would you have voted on this policy? If it's a policy you don't like, then maybe ask them what do you think we could do to work towards repealing this policy? Or, if it's something you support, maybe you want to know what could we do to strengthen this policy even more in future sessions.

Speaker 1: 14:58

I think you're going to find out a lot about candidates if you press them on some of these issues to find out what they know about the lawmaking process, what their position is and how they would deal with policymaking and if you would be in agreement with it. Plus, I also think it gives you an idea of what their level of knowledge is in the whole government process, because one of the things that I've seen and certainly I'm no expert, I'm new to this game and I'm just very interested and passionate about it as a citizen one of the things I've noticed is that most people engaged in politics have no idea what is happening on a policy level, whether it's at your local, city or county council level, maybe state level or especially federal level. Most people have no idea what's going on with federal level legislation and you know, we as citizens have really kind of slacked off and been lazy about our civic duty. I think that we're living under laws that we don't even realize exist until they impact us, in a way that most of the time, what wakes us up is when we've been harmed by a policy, which was my case, and so now I'm very vocal and really passionate about waking up other citizens so that they can engage in this process, so that we aren't living under bad policies that harm citizens and harm families and harm children. So these are really great things that you could engage your candidates about to find out. You know, hey, what do you know about this? What are your thoughts on this? Where could we go with this and both? I encourage you, as a voter, to not just ask Republican candidates, but also to speak with the Democrat candidates if you're in a blue area where your choices are going to be between maybe two Democrats or maybe a Democrat and a really squishy Republican, because you might find that the Democrat might be more impressionable than the Republican usually not, because usually the Democrats are really in lockstep with their party. But on both sides, you know, they are not, they're not a custom to being accountable to the citizens and the voters, and that's because we have sat back and not been engaged, and so, as a voter and as a citizen, it's our job to hold them accountable. So ask these questions on both sides. You know.

Speaker 1: 17:46

I think it's important for citizens to realize that most politicians are beholden to big tech, big pharma, big education. You know, lobbyist, special interest groups, unions. Those are the people that are really pulling the strings. Those are the people that are engaged in the policymaking, and the citizens are, you know, raising their kids, they're going to work, they're at soccer practice with the kids, and so you have sort of this disengaged citizenry, while all these people are making policies that are not in the best interests of the citizens. I rarely have seen where these lawmakers you know, I've watched so many committee meetings and I've watched floor debates and I very rarely hear about what's in the best interest of citizens. It's usually because different government entities are requesting a policy, but usually the citizen is kind of you know, an afterthought really, and they're all just kind of I call it playing politics and I don't think that it's great for the citizens.

Speaker 1: 19:00

And so that's why I've made it my focus to alert citizens and educate citizens and empower citizens to get involved and to speak up and to take action that can really create change and to show the lawmakers that, hey, we're here, we want to have a say you work for us and they do. These candidates that will be elected will be working for you. You are the voter, you are the citizen, you pay the taxes that pay their salaries. They work for you, but you can't be a boss that doesn't show up, that doesn't do evaluations, that doesn't hold them accountable. You need to hold them accountable and it's not policy, isn't rocket science. I think that a lot of lawmakers want citizens to think it is, because if citizens think that it is this very complex process, then they won't get engaged and involved.

Speaker 1: 19:58

But you know, our founding fathers did intend for bills to be easy to be read and understood by the average voter. They're not. A lot of them are, you know, lots of legalese. I would describe it as, but once you kind of get into it you can figure out. It really isn't rocket science and you can figure it out if you make it a point to start reading some of these bills, and I think it's really important for citizens to do that. Even if you just pick, you know one area of one issue that you want to focus on. Whether you know you're a two way gun rights person, or maybe you're concerned about education and what's going on in the education or health care, whatever your issue may be, pick one issue and maybe you know, just track a couple of bills during the session and read bills and see what's going on and you know, watch committee hearings and it's not really that time consuming if you break it down into a chunk like that.

Speaker 1: 20:57

But back to this poll, with almost 60% of the respondents saying that they just wouldn't vote, this is really, really discouraging to me, and I understand that. You know we don't have a lot of great candidates on our ballots and I don't know I can't really speak to Florida yet because I haven't been here through an election cycle but I know in Washington the recruitment for maybe right-leaning Republican, conservative, whatever you want to call them candidates doesn't seem to be very good. I think I know two years ago, when the Republicans asked me if I would run for the Senate seat where I lived, I said no for a couple of reasons. Number one because I knew I couldn't get elected because it was such a deep blue area where I lived. It didn't seem worthwhile to put myself and my family through what we would have had to go through if I was going to be a candidate. The other thing is I knew that the Republican Party would not allow me to get elected. They probably would have preferred me to a Democrat, but they probably would have replaced me with a Squishier Republican at their earliest opportunity. It didn't really seem like a fit for me, but I think you have a lot of people who would be good candidates, who aren't interested in playing politics.

Speaker 1: 22:23

I don't know how we change that, but I think that we do need good candidates. We have on the right. We have a lot of seats that go unchallenged because we don't have candidates for them. The Democrats don't have that problem. They always have a candidate to put on the ballot. Hopefully, recruiting candidates will get better. If you are someone that thinks you'd be interested in running, you should definitely do that. Go find your local GOP and let them know that you're interested in running for whatever it is city council or state representative, whatever it is.

Speaker 1: 23:02

We, the people, have got to step up and be willing to do the work. We can't just not vote, even if we have bad candidates. You've got to pick the better candidate, which is better than the alternative. One is better than the other, even if they're not great. Please do not sit out and vote. It's going to be an interesting election season. I'm sure that this is just the first of many election topics that I will be discussing on the podcast. I'd be curious to hear what you think about this. If your ballot contained a Democrat and a so-called Republican, what would you do? Would you vote for the better candidate or would you sit it out? I'd be curious to hear. Thanks for listening. Please be sure that you are subscribed to the podcast and please share with your circle of influence. I look forward to chatting with you again next time.