This may shock many of my readers, but I am in fact a registered Republican from the state of Arizona.

I take a page from Jeff Daniel’s character Will McAvoy in HBO’s now defunct ”The Newsroom” when I say that I would most likely be classified a ‘RINO,’ or a Republican in Name Only. I do not worship at the altar of Reagan; I do not believe abortion and gay marriage are threats to the American way of life; and I do not think gutting the federal government is necessarily the solution to the national woes.

I would call myself a non-log cabin Republican. I am a gay man in a same-sex relationship who believes in rule of law, market solutions, political pragmatism and using the Constitution to fit the needs of the day.

Many bygone Republicans, including Lincoln, Nixon and even Reagan would agree to this outlook. Lincoln installed martial law through many of the Union states; Nixon started the EPA and treated with China; and Reagan negotiated with the USSR, unilaterally invaded nations and illegally sold weapons to Iran to fund Latin American rebels.

These men were not the libertarians and social conservatives as modern Republicans would like to tout them. They were real politicians who wielded power according to the needs of the day.

Currently, there are 16 recognized GOP presidential candidates. The CNN debate on Sept. 16 at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library highlighted the strengths and weakness of many of those candidates.

Without growing pedantic about each candidate’s performance, I will just say the debate gave me hope and despair for the political party I wish I could love.

First, I heard nothing about the scourge of marriage equality now allowed everywhere. Perhaps mainline Republicans are waking up to the inevitability of this part of civil rights history.

Second, this is a race of states and outsiders. Of the three senators in the main debate, none are of the old guard.

The Economist said, “Republican primary voters are not in a revolutionary mood, then, but a regicidal one. They think their rulers are corrupt, inept and mendacious, if not actually treasonous.”

This is clear from the poll performance of Trump, Carson and Fiorina, especially after the debate.

I am not one of those voters. If I had a choice today, I would vote for Jeb Bush. He was the only candidate willing to depart from the ‘new America our children can grow up in’ rhetoric to talk about economic growth, jobs and a fairer immigration system.    

Young Republicans, listen up: the debate last night was a sideshow and a sham. I could not believe one of the debate questions was about presidential code names. If you are serious about having our party survive the century, we need to have our candidates held to specifics, held to account for their records and asked to comment concretely on real issues. 

This is no longer a game about who can be the most biblically bigoted or the best Tea partier. We need a moderate center-right party committed to individual initiative, economic opportunity, rule of law and reasoned governance. Of all the candidates I saw and heard, only ‘the other’ Bush seemed ready to do so.

Tyler Laferriere is a first year master’s student in applied economics and statistics from Phoenix, Ariz. He can be contacted at 335-2290 or by [email protected]. The opinions expressed in this column are not necessarily those of the staff of The Daily Evergreen or those of the Office of Student Media.