Dear Grandaughter,
I have been through many elections in my lifetime and I wanted to share with you my experience. I do not want to dictate who you may vote for, or how to choose the best candidate, but I want to share my experience with you to help you make the best decisions on your own. I believe that voting is a right that as a Christian we MUST exercise.
“The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing” Edmund Burke and also quoted by President John F Kennedy in 1961. Just one look at the evil that is running rampant in Seattle and Portland shows that not enough good men are at least voting!
The first election that influenced me even though I was too young to vote was 1964. It was Johnson vs Goldwater and on the schoolground during recess, kids were asking me who my dad was voting for. When I answered “Goldwater” they picked me up as a group and took me behind the building and started bullying me where no teacher could see them. As you may know I was raised in Portland OR just a mile from the location of the current Portland Police Union headquarters which was recently attacked by far left rioters seeking to burn the building down. I am sure it was not the same group that harassed me in grade school.
I remember the 1968 election and Richard Nixon. He was always ridiculed by the TV comedians but he got a landslide re-election in 1972 only to have some of his people be caught spying on Democratic headquarters at the Watergate Hotel near Washington DC. My opinion at the time was that everybody was doing it, but Nixon got caught. Nixon recorded all of his phone calls, but on one of the tapes there was an 18 minute gap that left his testimony in doubt and he resigned rather than being impeached. Gerald Ford became an un-elected president at that time.
The first election that I was old enough to vote for was 1976 when it was Carter vs Ford. When I heard that Jimmy Carter was a Christian and a Sunday School teacher, I thought that he would likely make a good President. I voted for him on that basis only. I was really disappointed! My lesson learned was that just because a person might be a Christian, doesn’t qualify him for positions of leadership. In 1979 hostages were taken in Iran and Jimmy had no idea how to handle this incidence.
The next election was 1980. Reagan vs Carter. It was easy to vote for Reagan. I had read both the Democratic and Republican platforms and decided (for myself not to judge others) that as a Christian I could NOT vote for the Democratic platform. I didn’t use simply abortion as a ‘litmus test’ as other Christians did, but I looked at the platform as a whole and saw it for what it was. I have voted Republican since then. Ronnie (The Gipper) was a great President. He continually put the media in it’s place and worked for a smaller government and built a great economy for the United States. Iran released the hostages taken rather than face Reagan in a war! In 1984 Reagan easily won over Democratic challenger Walter Mondale in 1984.
1988 was interesting. George H.W. Bush had been Ronnie Reagans’s vice president so he became the easy pick. Walter Mondale was the Democratic challenger and lacked any luster (at least to me). What I have found out more recently about George H.W. Bush has explained to me why he failed later.
1992 it was George H.W. Bush vs Bill Clinton. Of coarse I voted for Bush. But George H.W. Bush had vowed not to raise taxes he even said “Read My Lips.. No New Taxes”. His tax increase may have cost him this race HOWEVER, there was another fly in the ointment. This was the year Ross Perot decided to run as an Independent. It is possible that the conservative votes siphoned off by Perot also cost Bush this election giving it to Clinton. The big issue that year was NAFTA (North American Free Trade Agreement). Perot can be quoted as saying “NAFTA will make a giant sucking sound taking jobs from Americans”. In total hindsight, Perot might have been the best choice that year, but NO third party candidate can get enough votes to win an election. The only thing that a 3rd party candidate can do is upset the election by siphoning off votes from one side or the other.
1996 Bob Dole challenged Bill Clinton and lost. I voted for Bob.
2000 was George W. Bush (son of George H.W. Bush) vs Al Gore. This was the first election that seemed to be building a certain amount of drama to it. Al Gore ended up challenging the Florida vote and in my opinion the elections started to have more of a sinister (evil spiritual) angle to them. I genuinely liked George Bush as a person but I questioned the secret society that he belonged to. The 9/11 attack happened in 2001, George sent troops to Iraq (His father sent troops to Iraq to liberate Kuwait, but did not attack Suddam Hussain) to take out Suddam Hussain. In 2004 George won over John Kerry.
2008 Barrack Obama was elected over John McCain, and again in 2012 over Mit Romney. I do believe that Obama was the most corrupt and scandalous president to sit in the White House. There is evidence that his ‘wife’ Michelle was not born a woman and never actually went through with a sex change (Just google “Michelle Obama penis” and make up your own mind). Obama weaponized the IRS, DOJ, FBI, CIA and many other organizations against traditional American values in favor of a One World Government. Remember NAFTA? That giant sucking sound of American jobs being taken from the US. Obama said those jobs were gone and it would take some kind of “Magic Wand” to get them back. It seemed like America was on it’s way to oblivion and NONE of the previous presidents had helped much.
In my lifetime of listening to presidential hopeful speeches, I noted that they ALL promised things that we American Voters wanted to hear. It also was true that these promises were RARELY fulfilled. They were years and years of empty promises that were always excused away for some reason or the other.
In 2016 Donald J Trump joined the republican candidates for President. I never thought that somebody like him would run because why would an already rich and famous person want the “hot seat” of a US President and be put through all that incessant mocking from Saturday Night Live and others? I have seen it all my life. Promise to do several things and then get the office just to be obstructed by the opposing party and end up in the end doing nothing. I had my sights on other candidates. I didn’t take Trump seriously. I remember that when there were something like 10 republican candidates on a stage for a debate, the question was asked “If somebody else received the Republican nomination, would you drop your campaign and support them?” Donald Trump is the only person that didn’t say yes. (I think he knew something by then). Donald Trump ended up by the grace of God winning the Republican nomination. BUT I was skeptical because I have heard all those promises before and they were NEVER kept.
I think it was 60 days into the Trump administration that I began to see that THIS President intended to KEEP ALL of his promises. In the past 3.5 years I have watched and listened while President Donald J Trump has made extraordinary measures to keep ALL of the promises that he has made to the American people in 2016. This alone sets him head and shoulders above any previous president in my opinion. President Trump has demonstrated that his allegiance is only to the American people and the American way of life.
I could get into all of the ways that evil has infiltrated the American government over the years, but I will save that for another time. Just remember these things. If you want to know who to blame, follow the money (or power). Money and Power are the root of all evil. President Trump wants you to keep your money (He just enacted an Income Tax Holliday which means our paychecks will be bigger and this tax will NOT be owed after his re-election). You can also see him returning the POWER in this country to the people as written in the Constitution of the United States. You will see Law and Order will be the rule of this land. He will not overstep the laws written in the Constitution. (An example of this is how he allows the evil to exist in Seattle and Portland and does not send in Federal troops to restore law and order without the invitation from the local mayors and governors.
I want you to think for yourself. Decide what is the path that God wants for you. Research everything. Make informed decisions. Don’t just follow any friend, family, preacher or political activist (including myself) without doing your own research. Pray and ask God to lead you. Read the Bible! (Read the Koran if you can, but that’s yet another topic). Ask God to guide you through Jesus our Savior.
-Grampa Miller
