What would Dwight Eisenhower (or my father) think

Cultures shift and change and transform and, sometimes, die. I know enough to know that.

But as the inevitable becomes true and Donald Trump will almost certainly be the Republican nominee for President--what kind of sea change is this?

My father was a member of the United Mine Workers Union and a life-long Republican. Those two things didn't seem compatible at the time, but given Trump's enormous win in West Virginia, it's not too odd today.

But the Republican party my father belonged to--the party of Eisenhower, Dirkson and Rockefeller--doesn't exist anymore. That was the party of Lincoln, not Trump and Cruz. It was a party that worried about building highways, not building reputations. It was the party of the man who freed the slaves, not the party that wanted to keep a nationality (Mexicans) and a faith (Muslims) out of the mixing-pot that is the United States.

I may have told you, I was a Republican (like my father) until my Senior year of High School. I even spray painted "AU H2O" on an abandoned building in Anawalt. Then I heard Goldwater say he wanted to privatize the Tennessee Valley Authority, the government entity that brought water to our town.

Even then, Republican or not, I trusted government more than private enterprise. I still do.

I want government to handle health-care and infrastructure and the military and social services and education. And I'd gladly pay more taxes to have all that handled better.

My father would have thought Ted Cruz was a moron and Donald Trump was a braggart.

He wouldn't recognize the party he loved--the party that has done all it could to take power from all unions.

I'm not sure he could have voted for Hillary, but he might have thought Bernie was a liberal Republican back then. And he could have been. That would have been possible for someone like Bernie to be a Republican.

No more. No more.

To keep President Eisenhower and my father from spinning in their graves, please don't vote for Trump in November.

Please. Pretty please with sugar on it....