I’m a progressive who just became a registered Republican in Ky. Come join me.

On my 25th wedding anniversary, I skipped my morning run with my dogs and drove straight to our county clerk’s office in the old bank building across Main Street from Sweet Mash Southern Goods. I exchanged the usual pleasantries with Anderson County’s Clerk Jason Denny, a Republican. I asked for a change of voter registration card. And with the blue ball-point pen laying on the counter, I checked the box marked “Republican.”

My decision was not impulsive. Throughout the pandemic and a 2020 election cycle that ended with local losses and regional Democratic losses, the January 6 insurrection, and a highly-guarded, nearly empty Washington D.C. for the safety of Joe Biden’s inauguration, my mind has been in a constant spin around the same question: But what can I do about it?

When we married in September 1996, my husband and I were both so apolitical we did not know each other’s party affiliation before we tied the knot. But the farther the country veered right under George W. Bush, and the more educated I became about both history and politics, the more I leaned progressive, even as many new friends and all of my oldest friends are staunch conservatives.

Yet, the last time I recall having anything resembling a healthy, in-depth, policy conversation with a Republican was pre-2015. Why? Because everyone’s energy, Democrats and Republicans alike, has been bled to the bone by conspiracy theorists and professional prevaricators from President Donald Trump to Sen. Rand Paul to State Sen. Adrienne Southworth.

And in response, what are we doing differently in the way we organize, talk to each other, strategize, vote?

Nothing.

In the prologue of his 2021 book “Last Best Hope: America in Crisis and Renewal,” George Packer writes, “What do we see in the mirror now? An unstable country, political institutions that might not be perpetuated, a people divided into warring tribes and prone to violence—the kind of country we used to think we could save. No one is going to save us. We are our last best hope.”

All politics, as they say, are local, and about a month after my second Moderna vaccine I started going to a few county meetings again—zoning board, library board, fiscal court, school board—to see where we are where we might be going. It was, in a word, terrifying.

While yes, some of the people at these meetings are the regulars, we also now have the disrupters, the conspiracy theorists, the people who (if you listen to them speak at meetings or check their public Facebook posts) believe masks equal tyranny, voter fraud is rampant, Donald Trump is still the real president, Covid-19 is how Dr. Fauci is getting rich, and that the whole county would be better off if we all just carried more guns.

And here’s the kicker: These people are organized; they show up en masse; they are loud; their goals are to run for office and take over local governance from your school board to the mayor to the fiscal court. And they will be running as Republicans to primary traditional, moderate Republicans.

Sen. Mitch McConnell is right about one thing, and he says it often: Winners make policy, losers go home. I refuse to remain seated in my comfortable Democrat chair, talking to the people who already agree with me, only to lose elections (local, regional, and national) and go home, while extremists pretending to be Republicans take office.

I invite you to join me.

When I first moved to Anderson County, I was told Republicans often registered as Democrats so they could vote in Democratic primaries for the weaker candidate. Sounds crazy, right? But it worked. In one decade, our county flipped from reliably Democrat to overwhelmingly Republican.

This can work in reverse. Here’s how: Register as a Republican. Vote in their primary for traditional Republicans to keep the conspiracy theorists and extremists from power. In the general election, vote Democrat.

If the Democrat wins, great! If the Republican wins, ostensibly they believe in facts over conspiracy theories which, in this age of political insanity, is a win, too.

Imagine getting back to having policy conversations and debates based in fact. Imagine no longer exhausting yourself arguing over complete nonsense. Imagine eventually leaving the dangerous, conspiracy-laden Trump era behind.

We can do this. We have to. We are our last best hope.

Teri Carter is a writer in Anderson County. She can be reached at kentuckyteri@gmail.com.

This story was originally published September 30, 2021 at 9:44 AM.