As a proud and public partisan of the Republican Party, I consider it my civic duty to not only vote but to influence the votes of my fellow citizens as effectively as possible. This piece was written as a response and a rebuttal to an earlier, engaging editorial written by Chapman Caddell. I both appreciate his candor and wish to refute a few of his claims. As the Activism Director of SCR, I am very interested in getting Stanford students to vote for Republicans.

Other rebuttals of the blue counterpart to this article include:

1. Saying your vote doesn’t matter is akin to saying that pocket change doesn’t matter. Individual pennies don’t buy much, but you’d be surprised how quickly they can add up, and those who dismiss the margins will never prosper.
2. Even if your candidate loses, your vote is a valuable statement of where you want the country to go. Most politicians are cowards who dread crossing public opinion; don’t waste your chance to make them nervous.
3. Stanford Republicans don’t like what is generally considered the Republican ‘establishment’ either; we find it far too centrist and ineffective. Grassroot conservatives and firebrands like Ted Cruz, Rand Paul and Donald Trump tend to capture our imagination and sympathies much more easily. We want more of them.

This November, don’t settle for the most milquetoast neoliberal shill you can find. Locate a full blown, classical liberal, “capitalism is the single greatest thing to have graced the human race” Republican, and put them in office.

Frankly, getting you to vote is essential to me because almost all Republicans are insufficiently radical, and young voters are the only way my Republican party of the future can be realized. How are we ever going to abolish the monstrous Ponzi scheme that is Social Security if the young people who are being taxed to finance it stay home while the elderly who financially benefit from it have the highest proportionate turn out rate of any demographic?

It is true that campuses currently lean left, and most of the push to get you, my dear undergraduates, to vote is to unthinkingly swing the election for the Democrats. But it doesn’t have to be this way. SCR grows by the day. We had nearly 100 people express interest in our club during initial tabling. We want to turn Stanford University from a blue bastion into a purple battleground and, one glorious day, cardinal red.

I think that this administration is by far the best of the last 30 years and could potentially be the best of the last century. My vote will reflect that. If you disagree, wonderful. You make my life far more interesting. But before you cast your vote, find a College Republican — there are more of us than you think — and talk to us about the issues. We may change your mind, or you may change ours. But our Democracy will be better for it, and we can all support that.

— Michael Whittaker ’20

Contact Michael at mwhittak ‘at’ stanford.edu.