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!

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.

We have had some true Republican patriots in government (though I did not always agree with some of them) -- Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt, Eisenhower, Dirkson, Dole, Brooke, McCain, Nelson Rockefeller, and others. But, the vast majority of today's Republican politicians have long since sold out to big money and to wrongheaded doctrinaire political and economic ideology. Far too many of them are absorbed in a lust for personal financial gain, personal political power, and partisan control. They have become enemies of our democracy, our country, and our people.

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.