You know who you are: you voted for Trump because you were afraid the libs were gonna take your tax cuts, or because you were stupid enough to buy into the idea that Democrats were going to shut down police departments everywhere. Or maybe you were stupid enough to believe that you could “split” your ticket because you’re just a soft centrist.
Take a good look at your television, mother fucker. You created this shit.
The only way, the - on-ly - way - to stop this now is to abandon the republican party and become an independent. That is it. If you are a republican after today, you are a fucking traitor. Go to hell.
Right there with you. The Republican Party beat the drum of bullshit voter fraud risk for YEARS. They created this, and the people who voted for them helped.
That’s what I did the first time Trump got elected. Actually, once he was nominated I was done. I couldn’t have seen this coming but I couldn’t support an organization that embraces him as their leader.
I’m not a Democrat, but I doubt I’ll ever be a Republican ever again.
Honestly, that’s all I would ask. I’m not saying people have to agree with liberalism (I’ve got reasons why they should but I acknowledge that there’s space for differences), but what has marked the GOP the last few years has not been just hostility against a different ideology but hostility against that ideology’s right to compete in a free and fair election.
So no, no need to be a democrat, just don’t be a republican. That party needs to die. It can reconstitute itself, and surely would in time, but it’s like a corrupt business enterprise. If they want to call themselves the new republican party a few years from now, they can, but they need to liquidate first.
It would? Don’t you think that having sucky state and national candidates—especially at their present disastrous level of anti-factual delusional suckiness—is a concerning sign about the dysfunctionality of the party as a whole?
I mean, you can still vote for any non-sucky Republican school board members and other local officials that you can find, even if you’re not a Republican yourself. But what is the point, for anyone who values critical thinking and common sense, of actually belonging to the party and formally associating yourself with its current crazy ideology and blatant malfeasance?
I mean, if you’re out there actively trying to reform your party and call out stupid conspiracy theories and made-up “alternative facts”, more power to you. But I wonder if the good you could realistically expect to achieve would really be worth the death threats and so on.
Not in the primary election, I can’t. And D candidates have zero chance after the primary election.
We just had a ballot measure to open up primaries. I voted for it. Every political group of note was against it. One of those things I may never understand…
But it sounds as though your preferred non-sucky R candidates have zero chance in the primary, since your locality keeps electing sucky ones, according to you.
I mean, if you think you’re able to accomplish something by remaining in the Republican Party that is worth the stigma of being associated with it these days, great, but so far I’m not seeing what it is.
No, my preferred R candidates sometimes make it to local offices. State and national offices, well, my candidates have never won a single primary. And in personal contact, the stigma is usually associated with Democrats, not Republicans.
Well, naturally today’s Republicans are going to find it shocking that Democrats go around openly rejecting baseless conspiracy theories and denouncing misgovernance and taking science seriously and serving the public and all that nerdy stuff.
But yeah, I kind of see the OP’s point that rational Republicans who aren’t pushing back on those attitudes in their fellow Republicans are helping enable traitors.
I’m not asking you to leave the party because they suck; I’m asking you to leave the party because merely supporting them legitimizes everything that is done in the name of the party and its causes. If members of the party leave, they would have less ability to raise funds, less ability to organize, and less ability to identify who their radical “base” is. By staying in the party, you are supporting the party, whether you accept it or not - I don’t give a fuck. I will hold you and others accountable, all the same. In my view, and I suspect in the view of an increasing number of people, you are part of an insurrectionist party, and one that needs to be crushed absolutely.
They have shown they are NOT about the rule of law, fiscal responsibility or State’s rights. They about getting and keeping power, suppressing the vote and relegating black and brown and poor white people to second class status.
White rioters came to the capitol and police opened the doors for them. If they were black or brown, they would have been teargassed, beaten and shot before they tried to breach the line.
Short of leaving the party, maybe not vote to put deranged people in office. I don’t know how you voted, but you pretty much identified as a Republican. After watching the last 4 years of unhinged shitshow, did you vote in 2020 for Trump to be the President?
I used to be a good Republican. But years ago I came to the realization that my efforts were not producing any improvement in the Republican party. There’s no room to be a good person in the modern Republican party. So I left and became a Democrat.
I used to vote for some good Republicans. Back in 2006 I switched my vote from a Republican legislator whom I admired and had supported for several years, to his (victorious, I’m glad to say) Democratic opponent.
Not because I had any personal or ideological quarrel with the Republican as an individual, but because I was alarmed at the way GW Bush’s Republican Party was embracing ideological polarization, radicalism and ineptitude. Since my legislator’s own party was shunning, belittling and ostracizing him as a so-called “RINO”, who was of zero value to them unless he’d fall into line as a subservient partisan, continuing to vote for him wasn’t achieving anything except to encourage the Republican Party’s determination and power to go rogue.
It has been decades since voting for sane, humane, responsible individual Republican candidates has done anything to foster sanity, humaneness and responsibility in the Republican Party as a whole. Their only detectable goals at this point are (1) keeping themselves in power, (2) furthering the enrichment of their wealthy sponsors, and (3) whipping up sufficient outrage and resentment in their voter base (irrespective of whether they actually have any rationally defensible grievance) to inspire a winning percentage of voter turnout.
There are no good Republicans anymore – that party has to die off. The Mitt Romneys and Marco Rubios of the world need to abandon that party and become independents, and leave the R party in the dust bin of history. It’s important to understand why, though.
I had suspected for a long time that Republicans were evil, but I didn’t quite have 100% of the proof that I needed to really feel confident in making that kind of sweeping judgment to my own personal satisfaction. Yesterday was a game changer.
I had known for a long time that these people lived in their own zero-sum world based on a false reality that they willfully bought into. If these confederates could simply restrain themselves and confine their worldview to Parler or YouTube, that would be one thing. But when they stormed the Capitol, they tried to invalidate my vote. They tried to invalidate my citizenship. They made it so that I cannot escape the zero-sum world they live in. For the longest time, I’ve known how they feel about me (and most of you): they assume that when we “win” or when we “gain” something, they necessarily lose. That’s not really true, but that’s what they truly believe. Again, if they just believe it and don’t really do anything with that worldview, fine - they can torture themselves all they want. But they proved yesterday that they’re not satisfied with leaving well enough alone. And what it means is this: their zero-sum world, means that I have to live in it with them.
I have no fucking intentions of just sitting by and tolerating it. They fucked with me, and I am not going to turn the other goddamn cheek.
Well, in my view, I’m not about to disenfranchise myself just because random people on the internet say it’s the only way to defend democracy. You are free to think whatever you like of me.
It would? Don’t you think that having sucky state and national candidates—especially at their present disastrous level of anti-factual delusional suckiness—is a concerning sign about the dysfunctionality of the party as a whole?