It was supposed to have ended on November 8, 2016, when millions of Americans voted. When America woke up on November 9, 2016, they were greeted with the news that Donald J. Trump would be the next president of the United States. While millions breathed a sigh of relief that the election ordeal was finally over, thousands of others geared up for the next battle — the Electoral College.
Two months earlier, I was asked by the chairman of Florida’s Republican party to perform what I thought would be an honorable yet perfunctory task — casting my vote as one of Florida’s 29 electors to formally elect the person whom the people would vote for on Election Day.
Five months before I became a Florida elector, I was chosen to be a delegate to the Republican National Convention in Cleveland, Ohio. After the last primary had ended, it was clear that Donald Trump would be the Republican party’s nominee for president. But that didn’t stop the anti-Trump forces from marshalling an e-mail- and letter-writing campaign that inundated all of us delegates with missives from all over the country urging us not to vote for Trump. I felt like Glen Campbell’s Rhinestone Cowboy, “Getting cards and letters from people I don’t even know.” By party rule, I was bound to Donald Trump for three ballots, but that inconvenient detail seemed lost on those hell-bent on denying Trump the nomination. Their battle cry was to save the Republican party from destroying itself by nominating Trump because he was sure to lose in November, and along with him, hundreds of down-ballot Republican candidates, sealing the doom of the Republican party for a generation.
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