Some have characterized my words as having me declared that I would not be voting for President Bush’s re-election. One poster on an Internet forum went so far as to say that I looked like I had been “converted”.

Most people who know me are familiar with the fact that I call myself a Republican and Conservative. I’ve been one since the days of Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, Ronald Reagan, Bush 41, and Bush 43. What changed me?

The recent debate served to provide a kind of final straw in some thinking that has been formulating in my mind for many months of the Iraq situation. In that, we’ve all had to endure those gruesome images of our troops being killed and wounded. I won’t repeat at length what I said in the previous article, go back and reread it if you need a refresher.

So I closed with “I won’t vote for Kerry, but I have decided to withhold my vote from President Bush …”. I stand by those words. This is not the final answer however, in that, I have merely authorized myself to withhold my vote - for the time being. November 2nd is out there in the future and I want certain conditions met before I would support myself from actually carrying out the withholding of my vote. But I thought it was important that I authorized the withholding as a way of threatening the action, not actually authorizing the actual implementation of it. And before I actually do withhold it, I will have to authorize myself to act upon my earlier authorization. And that will require the conditions I alluded to just a moment ago.

I think I’ve cleared up any misconceptions or misrepresentations of my position on this matter. I’ve had one position, one consistent position all along.

Oct 4 2004 – Dave Eberhard
(reprinted with permission)