Why did you link there? What are your thoughts?

Although I have been a Democrat for years, I feel your pain. My parents were staunch Republicans but that was in the fifties. My dad said he would buy me a bike if Eisenhower won. I got a new Schwinn for Christmas. I can't believe this ugly change in a once patriotic party.

No creo en Dios!

With all due respect to people who claim the Republican Party was somehow wonderful in the past but has lost its way under Trump and now they can't identify with it, might a reality check be in order. This was a party that

• didn't help the progressive measures on racial tolerance or social welfare in the past, indeed they thwarted where possible.
• was the party of Nixon, and only did the right thing when the writing was on the wall.
• maintained an attack on Clinton, whatever his shortcomings, putting party before country, displaying the kind of phoney moral hypocrisy and utter ruthless disregard for the people collateral damage they caused.
• rig electoral boundaries wherever possible in their favour, disenfranchising people with scant regard to the meaning of democracy.
• used such dirty electoral tricks to bluster there way to the Bush Jr presidency, a biased Supreme Court they created doing their bidding. The Bush Jr presidency responsible for the 9/11 attacks which their incompetence did not prevent, not to mention the cluster-fucks (pardon my French) that STILL are Afghanistan and Iraq, and the almost total collapse of American capitalism in 2008 due to a major degree to republican 'economic' reform, and the colossal national debt which still ails the US.
• has allowed the worst kind of rancid reactionary conservative moralistic anti-modernist Christian fundamentalism to infect the national debate in America.

Just to name a few. This is party of the core ruling class of America. It cares for nothing but its class. Always has, always will. A party of pirates and crooks, devoid of true patriotism or political philosophy. Anyone who says that this party used to be a great party before.....etc is delusional and doesn't know about its history.

It stands for corruption atm.

...there is a flight of moderates, by the far right going into its own echo chamber. When I lived in NY, I’d call myself a solid R— because you could be moderate and not be viewed as “less than,” where I live now, I am an Independent voter because the left asks for too much power and the right does the same, and libertarians say leave it to people to sort out, which really was the moderate position in NY.

Republican or not, the man has a respectable point of view. Glad to see this; it's just a goddamned shame more people on that side cannot.

The tea party incursion has really changed so many things and certainly not for the better. But the Dems just seem to shoot themselves in the foot every chance they get. Our system is totally broken

I was never a "Party Voter", though I was a registered Democrat. I used to vote Republican on some issues, where I thought it was the better choice, and tended toward Republican locally. But now I find it totally impossible to ever vote Republican, and I have officially left the Democratic Party to become an unaffiliated Independent Progressive (in the mode of Bull Moose Progressive). I actually call for the curtailment if all Political Parties, and major changes to our very flawed political system.

My brain would never allow me to be anything but liberal and I am reasonably certain that a conservative brain would never allow it to be anything but conservative. In my opinion, that is just how brains are wired.

The ONLY way the republican party is going to change is if people join and force change.
I've rejoined the party and I'm making lots of noise. I'm not making a lot of friends,
but I am starting to see some who have been too afraid to say anything. They were bullied into silence. The more noise people like me make, the more noise they're going to feel it's okay for them to make.

I'm sorry, but part of the reason that we've gotten into this fucking mess is because too many people lost their balls and stopped speaking out against
the bullies. I might be female, but my balls are made of fucking titanium.
Everyone is so afraid of "getting hurt". Everyone is so afraid of taking on the
scumbags racists, religutards, and nationalists.
THAT'S why they feel so emboldened to pull their shit. Because they made
everyone else feel afraid to stop them.

Quit being so fucking afraid and DO something to stop this shit.