Chris Jepson: To educated Republican women

“The sun'll come out tomorrow. So ya gotta hang on ’til tomorrow, come what may. Tomorrow! Tomorrow!” — From the musical “Annie”

My gawd, will it ever end? If you had to create a presidential campaign from hell, 2016 is it. This farce (unfortunately a circus with serious consequences) has been going on for over a year. Democrats and Republicans alike are no doubt exasperated and frustrated.

Readers write and tell me I’m pond scum for supporting Democrats and for dismissing the likes of Donald Trump, John Mica and Marco Rubio. I do not respect any of these men. I find their policies simplistic, that they do not at all address the serious challenges confronting America. Worse, I think their ideology is both one-sided and short sighted. One-sided because their economic agenda favors the affluent and short sighted because what isn’t addressed today (climate change for example) will only become worse from our neglectful inattention. Let alone their primitive beliefs regarding women’s reproductive rights.

I’ve noticed something that doesn’t quite add up. If you read who is supporting Trump his number one identified core constituency is disaffected, uneducated white boys. They are allegedly aggrieved over their loss of status and jobs. They mourn an America that is increasingly “brown” in color and they rue the day when white folk will no longer be the majority. Yet when I drive around Winter Park, say down Palmer Avenue near Via Tuscany, I notice “Trump for President” yard signs. For neighborhoods of high status Winter Parkers to be displaying Trump signs suggests that more is going on than just the issues of lost jobs and diminished status.

I understand completely the issue of “keeping what’s mine.” And to that end wealthy Republicans have, since the 1980s, deftly manipulated social conservatives (anti-abortion, anti-gay rights, let’s have prayer and religion in government, etc.) into supporting low taxes and less regulation legislation in return for pushing a conservative social agenda.

I know a number of intelligent Republicans (not always an oxymoron) who quite candidly support a woman’s reproductive rights, who don’t care at all about the issues of gay marriage, who actually believe in evolution (I know. Amazing.), and who are deeply concerned for their grandchildren because of the undeniable evidence of global warming. Yet they inevitably vote Republican because they don’t want to pay more taxes.

This — to me — is so shortsighted and too sad for words.

This will be my last column before the election, and I address my final thoughts to educated Republican women. Chances are you’re working at a career. If you’re old enough perhaps you know women who were first hires (not so long ago) in upper management of major American corporations or who were the first to be made partner in an all-male law firm. You’ve no doubt experienced sexual harassment. You (your opinions) may have been marginalized or dismissed.

Hillary Clinton, for all that we know and understand about her, is worthy of your vote.

Go into the voting both and privately vote a woman for president of the United States. Do so for your sex, for America and for your daughters and granddaughters. And for your great grandmothers who couldn’t vote.

 Benjamin Franklin reputedly said of George Washington’s actual 1787 Constitutional Convention chair, which had a sun engraved on its back, that, "I have often looked at that behind the president without being able to tell whether it was rising or setting. But now I... know that it is a rising...sun."

Elect Hillary Clinton. It will be a sunnier tomorrow for women.