I worked for Republicans and Breitbart. Trump made me see whats wrong with the GOP. [View all]

[babylonsister]

https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2017/09/07/trump-made-me-see-whats-wrong-with-republicans-breitbart-kurt-bardella-column/622134001/

I worked for Republicans and Breitbart. Trump made me see what’s wrong with the GOP.
Kurt Bardella, Opinion contributor Published 3:15 a.m. ET Sept. 7, 2017 | Updated 2:44 p.m. ET Sept. 7, 2017
It's not easy to reset your political compass. My ask to Democrats is don't reflexively put down those of us trying to do it. Try welcoming us instead.

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My point: I’ve had an up-close look at the party and party-aligned organizations from just about every angle you can imagine. Breitbart’s shabby treatment of its own reporter as a sop to Trump — with whom the news outlet was closely aligned — was a major wake-up call. But it took the reality of the Trump administration to force me to confront some of the ugly realities about the GOP that, for years, I completely ignored because that was my team.

The president and many Republicans in Congress refuse to accept the scientific consensus on climate change, for instance, yet Trump expressed no skepticism before staring at the recent solar eclipse at an exact moment in time forecast by scientists decades ago.

Trump has advocated for law enforcement to use excessive force, ignoring the escalating tensions and violence between public safety officers and the communities in which police have unnecessarily claimed lives.

Republicans were quick to denounce Trump’s response to the protests in Charlottesville, Va., but they conveniently ignore the role they’ve played in furthering the racial divide in this country. From voter suppression campaigns to racially disparate sentencing guidelines, Republicans, long before Trump, have pressed ahead with a policy agenda that systemically attacks people of color.

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Don’t assume that everyone who voted for this president is a dupe or a racist. I’m sure a lot of people who voted for Trump have buyers’ remorse, but that doesn’t discount the root of why they voted for him in the first place. There was something lacking in the vision and message that the Democratic Party presented.

It would be easy to dismiss the Trump movement as a bunch of uninformed, "alt-right," gun-toting rednecks who think the wrong side won the Civil War, but I promise you if that’s the Democrats' takeaway from this election, they’ll never win another one again.

Right now, the Republican Party has been hijacked by its extreme base — leaving a number of people, just like me, with no place to go. This is a unique opportunity for the Democratic Party to fill that void, but it can only happen if Democrats make an honest effort. Politics is about ideas and policies, yes. But to win on those ideas, you have to win elections, and you do that by addition, not subtraction.