2016 Postmortem
In reply to the discussion: Honest view from my Republican husband on primary and beyond. [View all]skepticscott
(13,029 posts)They are exactly what they have always been the whole time he was supporting them: racist, bigoted, war-mongering, theocratic, anti-union, anti-tax, anti-poor, anti-immigrant, anti-intellectual, anti-environment, anti-choice, big-business fellating assholes. If he's voted for Republicans or supported the GOP in any way during the last 35 years, he is complicit in what they are and what they do right now. And he will be complicit in what Trump does if he votes for him, or tries to convince others to do so.
And please, don't say that your husband doesn't support any of that, because if he didn't, why would he EVER have voted Republican? That's what they are, and have been since Reagan. The lame justifications for voting Republican of "I'm a fiscal conservative, but a social liberal" or "I believe in limited government" are just so much horseshit, spread to cover far more ugly attitudes. In nowhere but a delusional fantasy world could anyone convince themselves that the Republicans who have championed hideously overblown military spending and warmongering without a way to pay for it, and grotesque intrusions into the private lives of American citizens are the party of fiscal conservatism or limited government.
Sorry if that's harsh, but the Republicans didn't wind up in power by accident. We're having to fight the fights we are today because people like your husband and so many others voted Republican in the 80s and 90s, knowing full well what they were supporting. The effects of that are still screwing up this country and the whole world, and it's time to place blame for it squarely where it belongs: not just not the people doing these things, but the ones who put them where they are. The fact that all of those people are someone's husband, wife, son, daughter, mother, father or friend does not entitle them to absolution.