About that NYT's op-ed

If you haven't heard about the New York Time's anonymous op-ed, I envy you the ability to switch off from political news.

Some of the late night show hosts have pointed out this part:

Given the instability many witnessed, there were early whispers within the cabinet of invoking the 25th Amendment, which would start a complex process for removing the president. But no one wanted to precipitate a constitutional crisis.

is like not wanting to, during a fire, break the glass in front of the fire extinguisher, because it will mean there'll be broken glass everywhere.

The line that most bothers me, however, is this

We want the administration to succeed and think that many of its policies have already made America safer and more prosperous.

This is the sort of spineless behavior that I finally propelled me out the door of the GOP and into being an independent.
The GOP was willing to let Trump run as a Republican, and in fact had him sign a loyalty pledge, because they feared if they rejected him, that he would run as an independent and split the vote, letting Hillary win. GOP representatives are afraid to speak out against Trump because they fear it will hurt their chances to win re-election.
This "resister" was willing to ally themselves with an unbalanced, amoral, hate-mongering traitor in order to get their pet policies adopted. Now they and others like them may think that they've gotten most of what they can out of him, or that the risks finally outweigh the potential rewards, and so they're committing
Yet even in this act of defiance, they aren't willing to put their name on it. They're not willing to say "This is not right," even if it costs them their job. They aren't willing to show true leadership. They claim that "the real difference will be made by everyday citizens rising above politics," but people need leaders to help enact change, and we recently lost the only GOP leader who showed any guts to oppose Trump.

Abandoned by the GOP

I wonder what it will take for the moderate Republicans, the ones disgusted by Trump and his cronies, to not skip the polls this November, but to show up, to bite the bullet, and to vote for Democrats. Staying home may sound more attractive. Third-party candidates may seem more attractive. But if you really want to send your message of disapproval of what your party has become, crossing the aisle and voting Democrat will accomplish that better than any other way.

I'm not saying this as a Democrat. I used to consider myself a Republican. I still have some conservative leanings, especially with regards to a smaller federal government. But I could not stay in a party that would choose to abandon its principles to cater to the hate-mongering of Donald Trump. I could not stay in a party that embraced the racially-motivated detention and deportation of undocumented workers. I could not stay in a party that purported to stand for family values and yet put forward a candidate who had not only cheated on all of his wives, but has been accused of and bragged about sexual assault. I could not stay in a party that would support a man who clearly suffers from narcissism (and probably several other personality disorders as well) to be the Commander in Chief of our armed forces and the face of our nation to the world.

You could say I abandoned the GOP, but not before the GOP abandoned me.

So much as I still hope to some day see a smaller, more efficient federal government, unless and until the GOP can reclaim some sort of morality and oust not only Trump but all those who have supported him, my votes are with the Democrats, even if my heart is with the Modern Whig party.