Very true. One of the reasons I despise Trump so much. He ripped open that rift and is laying it bare. My party of 36 years is gone. I was welcome on TOS for 18 years before Trump. It is now dead to me. It didn't have to be this way.
In a very clear way, he has done us a favor. I was over there for 18 years, too. Four decades of GOP support are over.
What has happened is that those who hold to principles still have those principles.
Those who place their hopes in mere personality have separated themselves off, showing that willingness to discard principled belief for 'electability', or to 'defeat' whoever, or support the 'lesser evil', by choosing a candidate based not on careful consideration of past performance, character, and stance on issues, but their more superficial characteristics.
The result of that behaviour in the past has been a series of defeats for the GOP and America as what should have been the party of principle became more like those other guys.
This year, it is just more intense, in an election where the country is deeply divided along rifts filled with anger.
It is ironic that whose who are first to compromise their principles and have backed a series of candidates increasingly like their opponents on policy, would blame those of us who have been warning about 'Democrat Lite' or 'Liberal Lite' not providing the contrast needed to energize the Conservative base, even as others relabeled their diluted liberalism as some form of hyphenated conservatism.
You see, the problem is that those principles are the DNA of America, the life's blood of the concept. Start compromising them away, gene by gene, and, sooner or later, you will create a lethal mutation or a monster.
