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Emily's avatar

What a fantastic, fantastic interview. I was raised Evangelical Protestant; my dad was a pastor, and a Reagan-era Republican. I also went to a conservative Reformed Protestant parochial school for most of my education (shout-out to my fellow A Beka Book curriculum folks!). The school, and the church attached to it, were highly Christian Nationalist. They were energized by the Moral Majority - one of my teacher's husbands served a brief stint in prison for repeatedly chaining and padlocking himself to the doors of Planned Parenthood - and the school groomed and guided the male students toward political life. My parents provided the counter-balance to a lot of these beliefs: they viewed them as fringe and short-sighted, and noted that Jesus specifically did not save the world through political power or revolution. Dad would have died before talking politics from the pulpit, but my parents were certainly still conservative and the little bubble of my world was almost entirely Republican.

The cracks began to show as the simmering and hateful reactions to Obama bubbled up to the surface: my Dad refurbished antique guns in his spare time, and enjoyed getting them back to polished and working condition, but he stopped going to the gun range when the tenor turned into fear-mongering about the government and anger toward "the Libs." I had voted for Obama in that election; my parents weren't his biggest supporters, but they also felt like the reactions they were seeing were wholly disproportionate to the reality of the situation. Donald Trump's campaign widened those cracks: my Mom in particular was convinced that there *had* to be something we just weren't seeing, because enthusiastic support was so intense, but there was never an answer that could satisfy their decades-long conservative values. Trump's reaction to losing and the chaos of January 6th just split those cracks wide open.

There is a lot of talk about people like my parents 'fleeing' the Republican party, but I think it's more accurate to say that the Republican party fled away from them. It fled toward nativism and anger, toward "alternative facts" and a strong-man leader, and toward the belief that Big Government power is only bad if they're not the ones wielding it. As Kinzinger says, it's not the conservative party anymore: it's the party running on making radical changes and reshaping the world to fit their worldview. That kind of political project was what kept my parents from voting Democrat in the past and yet has, ironically, been the reason they've voted Democrat since Trump came onto the scene.

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Sherry's avatar

What a great interview! I love Adam and his integrity! Thank you for sharing with us, Sharon.

I say this with respect to all: The reality is we only have two parties right now, one of which will win the election. If your choice is between tearing down the principles America was built on or maintaining some semblance of democracy, even if some views don't align with yours, why would you write in someone who will not win? If it's a single issue you just can't bear to vote for, perhaps viewing each party as a whole and what they ultimately wish to accomplish would help? We never get everything we want. Never. But we can get close, and we can hope to live with less anger, vitriol and hate. I'd say most of us are just tired of that. Exhausted. The idea of living through another 4 years of tearing down America, calling it a hellhole, pitting us against one another, villainizing non-whites, women and the government, etc., is a place I'm tired of revisiting. Adam Kinzinger is a good example of how even when you don't always align on every topic, some choices are just better on the whole.

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