I Voted for Trump and Now Regret It. Here's How Democrats Can Appeal to Voters Like Me.

[Qutzupalotl]

Original title:
I Voted for Trump and DeSantis—and Now Regret It. Here’s How Democrats Can Appeal to Voters Like Me.

There are plenty of conservatives willing to join an alliance to put the GOP out of its misery and preserve democracy.

Rich Logis, October 13, 2022

It’s also a choice to credit DeSantis for shelving the juvenile “Let’s Go, Brandon!” silliness that’s been his stock-in-trade. If only he’d take such credit to heart: At the risk of my cynicism winning out, I suspect DeSantis will soon resume the politically traumatizing rhetorical performances with which he and his fellow Republicans have become associated, comically centered upon spectral threats such as mass-looting migrants, Marxist teachers manufacturing gay kindergartners, and wild rewrites of history—did you know that James Madison secretly wished that America would become a Christian theocracy? If this display of harmony with Biden isn’t a temporary one after all, DeSantis will fail his purity test; the latter-day Confederacy sympathizers who watch his every move might mistake him for a quisling “Republican in Name Only.”

I’m no longer registered with any party, but I intend to vote Democrats straight down the line—not because I want to become a convert but because I believe it is in the national interest to submit this current form of the GOP to a political mercy-killing. I believe that in this state, and across the country, there are many like me, and I believe that Biden and his Democratic colleagues can, in their closing argument, effectively summon us to their side.

No, this is not a political party that “cares”—about you, your family, or your livelihood. It’s not a party that cares enough about our history to treat it with candor. The revisionist histories of the GOP enforce the inaccurate assertion that America is not a democracy but a republic; we are both, and the Framers instituted a complex form of majority rule to potentially safeguard against a tyranny of the majority. It’s also a political party that understands that it’s not actually in the mass appeal business anymore: To the GOP, you are either a traumatized convert or an outsider to be treated with malice.

Here’s a plain truth: The vast majority of the adults left in the room are Democrats, and there are millions of Republicans who know this. I recognize this because I was, once, such a Republican. The Democratic Party may not always get policies right, but it works to better the lives of all Americans and not just its own voters. Most Republicans, by contrast, now make mockeries of the oaths they swear to uphold. Deep down, if you’re a sensible Republican, you know you’ve been lied to, and exploited, by your party; voting Democrat will mean you elevated your nation, and your democracy, above your party affiliation.

https://newrepublic.com/article/168110/gop-illiberalism-democracy-2022-election