If you vote for a fascist are you a fascist?

[DFW]

7. Not necessarily. It all depends on your reason for doing so.

If there is an open primary and you want to divide the Republicans so that they present a weak compromise candidate, and a vote for a Republican fascist is strategic in giving the Democratic nominee the best chance in the general, then you do it.

The very first time I ever voted, it was for a Republican. It was 1971, I did so gladly, and with no regret. I was in college in Philadelphia, and for the next election for mayor, the Democrats nominated the thoroughly corrupt, oafish sadist of a Police Commissioner, Frank Rizzo. This guy was so bad, he made Trump seem palatable. He got the nomination of the city Democrats because the city machine was in the hands of thoroughly corrupt gangsters who found it convenient to be Democrats.

The Philadelphia Republicans, knowing they had no chance of electing a mayor in Philadelphia, nominated a calm, soft-spoken, bland city bureaucrat named Thatcher Longstreth. No one had heard of him before or since. Rizzo won, of course. He soon switched to the Republicans, hung out with Nixon until it became obvious how corrupt he was. Nixon had his own problems with Watergate, and didn't need the blatantly corrupt Rizzo hanging around to remind people what kind of company he tended to keep. When Rizzo started building a mansion costing ten times his salary, questions got raised, he resigned, and went back to being a professional loudmouth. A perfectly putrid person. I don't regret in the slightest voting for his opponent.