Mulshine’s voting guide: Vote for the object, not the subject | Mulshine

Around this time of year people often ask me who I'm voting for. There's even more to discuss this year after those legal filings regarding the Donald's scurrilous behavior on Jan. 6, 2021, were released last week.

But that's the wrong question.

The real question is what I'm voting for.

Or to put it another way, the question is what I'm voting against.

In that regard let me offer this exercise: Make a list of all the government policies you dislike. Then go down that list and put a check next to the name of the candidate most likely to curtail them.

On Election Day, pull the lever for that candidate.

No need to tell anybody who you voted for; that's why they pull that curtain around the voting machine.

But don't vote based on such silly concepts as integrity and character. A candidate with those qualities has no chance of making it through the nominating process.

I offer Ron Paul as Exhibit A for that thesis. The Texas congressman was as honest a politician as I've ever met . But in 2012 the Republican Party machinery swept him aside in favor of Mitt Romney.

Remember him? He was the guy who as Massachusetts governor pioneered the approach to health care that formed the template for Obamacare - and then ran against his own program when Barack Obama took it up.

And whatever you do, don't vote based on personality. It was often said of George W. Bush that he was the type of guy you could sit down a have a beer with.

But he didn't drink. If he'd spent his evenings getting plastered, perhaps he wouldn't have had time to get the country permanently bogged down in the Mideast.

Another famous teetotaler-president was Donald Trump. He's a poster boy for the saying "Never trust a man who doesn't drink."

Back in 2005, he began marketing "Trump Vodka," but sales never took off, possibly because he himself didn't drink.

In his time-honored fashion, Trump got involved in a legal dispute after he was accused of stiffing the brand's bottle supplier.

In revenge, the supplier had 500,000 Trump Vodka mini-bottles destroyed.

That was typical for Trump. Back in his Atlantic City days, Trump was notorious for stiffing suppliers.

One of those stiffed was Seth Grossman, an ultra-conservative lawyer and radio talk-show host.

But Grossman said the A.C. crowd supported Trump.

"Everybody down here is rooting for him," he told me in 2016. "They figure he'll screw the Chinese the way he screwed us. He'll probably screw some Arabs, too."

Now, that's the spirit!

As the old saying goes "Politics ain't beanbag." But if it were, Trump would figure out a way to rearrange the beans.

No Republican Party figure I know is unaware of Trump's nature in that regard.

The ideal scenario from a Republican perspective would be for Trump to defeat Kamala Harris and then resign on the grounds that he's too old to be president.

The presidency would then go to JD Vance, who has already shown he has the skills at prevarication that are a prerequisite for a long career in politics.

As for Trump, he has done us all a service by focusing the debate on ideas. On nearly every question, he offers an approach that is the antithesis of the Democrats'.

When it comes to electric cars, for example, the Biden administration offers a plan that would require that by 2030 one-half of vehicles sold will be electric.

But a lot of us car-lovers prefer gas.

On foreign policy, Trump is calling for a peace agreement between Ukraine and Russia and threatens to cut off aid to Ukraine.

Biden has called Vladimir Putin "a war criminal" and has called for a war-crimes trial of the Russian leader.

In both cases, the contrast couldn't be more stark.

Remember those people who used to say there's no real difference between the two major parties?

You don't hear from them anymore.

As for the question of how I would vote, here's the cold truth: It doesn't matter.

It doesn't matter how you vote either, assuming you live in New Jersey. Our state is irredeemably Democratic, and nothing you or I can do will change that fact.

I don't expect the release of those Jan. 6 accusations against Trump to have much effect.

People already knew what a scoundrel he is.

Now get to work compiling that list.

And keep it to yourself.

Paul Mulshine may be reached at .