My Last Day as an Accomplice of the Republican Party

Monday, October 20, 2025

Miles Bruner: Why I'm leaving the GOP and why I'm urging my former colleagues to do the same.

Posted by reinheitsgebot at 08:30 PM | 11 COMMENTS | permalink | Comment on This Entry |

Trump's assault "would not have been possible without the thousands of consultants, aides, and politicos working behind the scenes to fully execute their systematic dismantling of American democratic norms." Miles Bruner on leaving the Republican party: www.thebulwark.com/p/my-last-da ...

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-- The Bulwark (@thebulwark.com) Oct 20, 2025 at 9:01 AM

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Good article, he makes rational points but the people he's trying to sway are unfortunately not rational people.

#1 | Posted by qcp at 2025-10-20 11:10 AM | Reply | Newsworthy 4

... Why I'm leaving the GOP ...

Back around two decades ago, I left the Republican Party, after being a registered Republican for decades.

I even had an office within the Party for my Town, but I left both the Party and that office.

Why?

At the time the flagrant misogyny of the time by Tea Party candidates.

#2 | Posted by LampLighter at 2025-10-20 09:07 PM | Reply | Newsworthy 1

When I departed that outfit over fifty years ago two points really stuck in my craw:
The war - half of the Americans who died in Vietnam did so while Nixon and Kissinger screwed around.
The increasing Dixiefication of the party, due to Nixon seeing an opening in a region where Dems became Reps.
Mostly because they were (and remain) racialists.
I will add that Nixon also drew in the evangelicals because they were, as now, hopelessly naive, filed with hate, and hungry for power.
Not for a moment have I ever regretted leaving the puke bucket the GOP has become.

#3 | Posted by Doc_Sarvis at 2025-10-21 05:48 AM | Reply | Newsworthy 1

One has to admit that this version of the Republican Party has made the decision easier than at any other time in recent political history. Trump is dividing us one from another, he is daily alienating us from our historical allies, and he is encouraging the mass murdering psychopath Putin to keep it up since Trump has told Ukraine to surrender a third of the country.
The Republican Party is about the rich and the powerful, but they don't have the numbers to win elections, so they have, for a long time, used the "southern strategy" of Lee Atwater to get out the racist white southern and midwestern vote.
Was always thus, will always be thus, until the far right finally destroys our democracy and we are a pretend democracy with a gang running the show, a gang of billionaires.

#4 | Posted by Hughmass at 2025-10-21 07:45 AM | Reply | Newsworthy 1

The Bulwark.

This guy's objection is not rooted in principled conservatism.

#5 | Posted by BellRinger at 2025-10-21 12:22 PM | Reply | Funny: 4

This guy's objection is not rooted in principled conservatism.

#5 | POSTED BY BELLRINGER

Principled conservatism: inhumane cruelty and lots of "principled" revenge and retribution.

#6 | Posted by donnerboy at 2025-10-21 12:28 PM | Reply | Newsworthy 5

Ronald Reagan was the first American president I was old enough to follow on tv, news articles, etc. He's sort of the standard for the Republican party, the neoliberal beginning.

Reagan had four basic traits that made him stand out IMO.

1-He spoke directly to the American people. ALL of them.
2-A quick and playful sense of humor
3- Believed in the promise of America and was unapologetically patriotic.
4- Finally Reagan recognized how evil communism was, and wanted Russia to lose.

Trump is the polar opposite of these four things. He speaks only to his base with any respect, uses put downs instead of being funny, claims American cities are full of "carnage" and thinks they're ---------. He hugs the flag like a child, not understanding anything about this country.
And Trump is owned by Putin.

The Republican party has really fallen. Can you imagine Trump giving Reagan's Challenger disaster speech? I can't.

#7 | Posted by Alexandrite at 2025-10-21 12:40 PM | Reply | Newsworthy 1

Two years to late for "mea culpa, mea maxima culpa." far too late.
A huge amount of damage has already been done and we're not even 1/4 into the Trump disaster.

#8 | Posted by e1g1 at 2025-10-21 10:59 PM | Reply

Let me say:

My first election I voted in was at age 18, 1980. I saw Carter as weak and Reagan as strong.
By 1984, I saw through the Reagan sleepy charade and there was of course also the arms-for hostages and the Contra crimes and Nancy making the decisions.

I voted Democrat in 1984.

In 1988, I voted Republican again. Since 1992, the GOP has slowly devolved into the know-nothings and ---------- trolls. The party today is a ------- joke; dictators (Trump, Abbott, DeSantis), bad performance artists (Palin, Mace, Noem, Hegseth), trolls (Hawley, Cruz, Tuberville) and obvious malevolent idiots (Johnson, Cotton, any OK politician, McMahon, Lake, Leavitt, Blackburn).

Until the party actually quits lying, committing crimes in the open, trampling the Constitution, and does something for anyone other than their billionaire donors and the religious ultra-hypocrites, I will never consider voting R again.

#9 | Posted by e1g1 at 2025-10-21 11:09 PM | Reply

#5
BELLRINGER: "principled conservatism"

Please explain what that might be in this day and age, with a few examples of folks who fit that bill.

Thanks (eager to learn).

#10 | Posted by Doc_Sarvis at 2025-10-22 05:53 AM | Reply

And a day later, BELLRINGER done gone total Trumpy: Ta-ta-ta-TACO.
Thanks, Jeff, for just shutting up and folding that losing hand.

#11 | Posted by Doc_Sarvis at 2025-10-23 05:09 AM | Reply