Before we go on, with all due transparency, I want to make something perfectly clear, I am a Republican, a proud registered Republican, a New Jersey Republican, one of the three left in my little town in Northern New Jersey (pop. 9,937). There may be others, but it’s not such a good thing to be called one openly the way things have been going in the Oval Office lately.

When the Kitmans emigrated here from Pittsburgh, with a stop in Brooklyn, in 1961, this used to be a solidly rock-ribbed Republican town. Everybody, it seemed to us, was a Republican.

Now Republicans In New Jersey should be on the Federal endangered species list, with the gray wolf, moose, and lounge lizards. Our local Republican Party organization, if it still exists, doesn’t even bother to put candidates on the local ballot anymore. We are a one-party town, like in Russia.

Some of my best friends still can’t believe I am a Republican. How could such an intelligent, handsome, tall person, who actually reads books, be a Republican?

Actually, I am a Lincoln Republican. The GOP used to be the party of Lincoln, a party that was strong on civil rights, the right to vote, a single nation under the Constitution, and a belief in veracity, whose leader was known as “Honest Abe.” I even ran for president as a Lincoln Republican in 1964. I lost. It was an experience that prepared me for writing about the 2016 election, even more than having watched all seven seasons (161 episodes) of The West Wing.

I am also a Teddy Roosevelt Republican. Under TR, the GOP broke up the trusts, fought Wall Street, the big banks, and corporations, who were real enemies of the people and free enterprise. Teddy Roosevelt created the national parks, which the current version of the party is now subdividing into housing tracts and mining claims.

Furthermore. I am an Eisenhower Republican, in the sense that I liked Ike’s crusade in Europe more than the current POTUS crusade to throw our Western allies under the bus and suck up to the Russians.

As one of the last four Eisenhower Republicans (one of whom was David Eisenhower), I still appreciate Ike being first in warning us about the military-industrial complex!

And let’s not forget, I am one of those Republicans who is still an avowed anti-communist.

The Republican Party of today is the party of squishiness on communism. We Republicans made Red witch hunts the nation’s second-favorite spectator sport after watching TV. Now our Republican president whispers secrets like a schoolgirl to Vladimir Putin and accepts Russian help in elections.

Our Republicans currently sitting in Congress are led by those progressives Moscow Mitch McConnell, with a face that looks like a turtle, and Trump’s Hoosier Boy Friday, what’s his name Pence, who should go back home to Indiana, where he was losing his race for reelection as governor. They are gutless cowards, afraid to bring up our hallowed past to a president who is an ignoramus about history. They have nothing to fear but the president’s tweets and his snarky nicknames, which apparently are too much to bear.

The Republican Party of today is the party of Lincoln the car and the tunnel, and it is a party that would have made the Attorney General’s List of Subversive Organizations under the Smith Act.

I blamed my loss in 1964, if I may digress, on being too closely aligned with Lincoln. His picture was on my campaign buttons and featured in all my campaign literature.

The Republican Party, I declared in my 1964 concession speech, was not ready for Abraham Lincoln. And still isn’t today. All of which explains the president we’ve got.

As a lark, I began keeping a journal of “this campaign thing,” as a future president might call it, that could be studied by future historians, like Artie Schlesinger’s The Age of Jackson, or a memento for my grandchildren, demonstrating how Zayde wasted his time when he could have been writing the great American novel.

In the hands of an objective and unbiased crack reporter like myself, it might have turned out to be a history of the most strange and bizarre administration in our 226-year history, as seen through the eyes of a registered Republican.

Furthermore, it might have been a guide to the 2020 election, giving a glimpse of what the future might hold should we be unlucky enough to elect that political joke Donald Trump in 2016. Not that it could possibly happen.

My plan had been to cover the 2016 political debut of my favorite real estate developer before his presidential aspirations evaporated like the morning dew.

Unfortunately, in the course of my research, I came down with a severe case of Trumpitis, a disease caused by media overexposure, which afflicted many news junkies like myself. Some people found looking at Trump and his head of hair sickening; others were nauseated by the sound of his voice. It turned out I was in a third group. Both the sight and sound of him were making me sick. The hand gestures alone were driving me up the wall.

Fortunately, I had a plan B. I could always do the book Trump-style: Don’t waste time on research. Make up whatever facts you need.

—Marvin Kitman
Somewhere in Northern New Jersey
January 2020