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Former county GOP chair endorses Harris-Walz

By Robert Danos, Published: October 21, 2024

Just a month into a hurricane recovery would not have been a time I would have ever thought to make a political statement. 

However, it is precisely because of Donald Trump's ongoing lies and fear mongering about Helene and what is happening in Western North Carolina that pushed me off the sidelines and into making a public statement on this election. Trump knows that zero disaster relief dollars can be spent on migrants. He knows that the $750 in "Serious Needs Assistance" is in addition to — not in replacement of — FEMA's other usual programs. And he certainly knows that "Republican areas", as he has claimed, have not been ignored by the state or federal government. These lies are an immoral, cheap way to use us as props and are a smear on every Guardsman and soldier that have been deployed since Day 1. These lies are causing direct harm to people in WNC and it should outrage people of good faith. 
However, my decision to vote for Harris & Walz boils down to eight years of evidence of two clear and dangerous flaws of Donald Trump; 1) his complete disregard for our Constitution and 2) his shocking lack of fitness for the role of Commander-in-Chief.
1) Trump's disdain for the Constitution was of course most on display after he lost the 2020 elections and especially on January 6th. I agree with Vice President Dick Cheney 100% that during that period Trump "tried to steal the last election using lies and violence to keep himself in power after the voters had rejected him" and that "he can never be trusted with power again.” It is only thanks to Trump's own people like Vice President Pence and Attorney General Bill Barr that it didn't spiral even more out of control. Who would control him in a second term?
I remember the Republican Party once laying claim to the phrase "Back The Blue" and being the Constitution's strongest defenders. Yet, Trump wants to pardon the very rioters that attacked, injured and caused the death of law enforcement officers that day as part of his scheme to subvert Article II of the Constitution. It is not acceptable to be pro-law enforcement and pro-Constitution only when it is convenient.
2) In terms of our national security, I have asked many traditional Republicans recently one simple question. If I had asked you during my time as a party official to back a Commander In Chief who had been found dangerous, unstable, and erratic by his Vice President, both Defense Secretaries, his National Security Advisor and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, what would you have thought? The only honest answer of course is that it sounds insane. A man who sends love letters to Kim Jong Un, treats Putin like an ally, and can't treat our allies properly without being flattered in public is a clear and present danger to our country.
Harris and Walz have demonstrated the lifelong fidelity to our Constitution that we have always demanded from our leaders. And they exhibit the calm demeanor and adherence to the post-WWII bipartisan mainstream of foreign policy needed for our national security.
We need a healthy two-party system, but right now the Republican Party is sick from the effects of one immoral and unstable man. His sickness extends to the immoral and ridiculous candidates he endorses such as Mark Robinson. A restoration of a traditional Republican party can not begin until enough voters use the privacy of the voting booth to put an end to the Trump era.
I am proud to join Henderson County's own Justice Bob Orr, Vice President Dick Cheney, and countless other former Republicans, Republicans, and Independents in supporting Harris and Walz.
 

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Robert Danos was chair of the Henderson County Republican Party from 2007-2010, the spokesman for the 11th Congressional District NCGOP from 2012-2014 and a columnist for the Hendersonville Times-News from 2014-2017. He volunteered for his first campaign in 1988, for George H.W. Bush, and has worked with numerous Republican local, state and federal campaigns up until 2016. He switched his registration to unaffiliated after Trump's election in 2016.