{"id":1316204,"date":"2019-10-29T00:36:00","date_gmt":"2019-10-29T06:36:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.postindependent.com\/flowers-column-ive-had-enough-im-done-with-the-republican-party\/"},"modified":"2019-10-29T00:36:00","modified_gmt":"2019-10-29T06:36:00","slug":"flowers-column-ive-had-enough-im-done-with-the-republican-party","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/local-news\/flowers-column-ive-had-enough-im-done-with-the-republican-party\/","title":{"rendered":"Flowers column: I\u2019ve had enough. I\u2019m done with the Republican party"},"content":{"rendered":"
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With so much happening in the world, you probably don\u2019t want to read about my own personal dark night of the soul.<\/p>\n

But at the risk of sounding narcissistic, I do think there is some value in examining why a person like me would feel compelled to leave the Republican Party.<\/p>\n

It was only four years ago that I proudly, defiantly and publicly abandoned the Democrats. I\u2019d left them in spirit many years before, mostly because of their insistence on treating abortion rights as fundamental. Nevertheless, apathy kept me from changing my registration for several years longer than I probably should have.<\/p>\n

In 2016, John Kasich was my escape hatch. Changing my registration just in time for the Pennsylvania presidential primary gave me the sense that even if he didn\u2019t win the nomination, I was able to cast my vote for a genuinely pro-life candidate: pro-child, pro-mother, pro-worker, pro-immigrant, pro-faith. He spoke a language I understood, a language that had become mangled in the mouths of Democrats.<\/p>\n

Watching the debates this week, I heard that confused rhetoric again, with the candidates all declaring their horror at the carnage of gun violence but completely at peace with legalized abortion. If I needed any reminder of why I stopped supporting the Democratic Party, it was right there on that stage.<\/p>\n

But the comfort and fellowship I thought I\u2019d found in the GOP was shattered last week, when President Trump took a phone call from Turkey\u2019s president and decided to withdraw our troops from Syria, abandoning our Kurdish allies. While some GOP lawmakers spouted off righteous indignation and some invoked real pushback, for me, it was too little, much too late. The abandonment of the Kurds and the almost cavalier attitude of some of my Trump-supporting acquaintances was a wake-up call that this was no longer a party I wanted to belong to.<\/p>\n

This was supposed to be the party that valued our relationship with NATO, the party of a strong national defense, the party that respected our military. This was supposed to be the party that didn\u2019t take a knee when the National Anthem was played, that wasn\u2019t embarrassed by overt expressions of patriotism.<\/p>\n

My angry feelings toward the Republican Party were further compounded this week when two agencies of the federal government \u2014 ICE and the FBI \u2014 threatened to deport one of my immigration clients. My client has spent the last few years providing valuable information to them in exchange for being allowed to remain in the United States \u2014 but now that the investigation has closed, he\u2019s been taken into custody and it is likely that he\u2019ll be deported.<\/p>\n

I believe strongly in loyalty. It\u2019s everything to me. That\u2019s why I can\u2019t get behind a Republican Party that is disloyal to everyone from our Kurdish allies, who supported us in the Middle East, to my client, who risked a lot to help America and was repaid by being sent to a detention center.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve had enough. I will never return to the Democratic Party, because of how they embrace abortion, play games with identity politics, and think that gender is a matter of opinion. But I no longer feel that the Republican Party represents my morals.<\/p>\n

This is my own Declaration of \u201cIndependent.\u201d This week, I registered as an Independent. I will never again be a Democrat, particularly not Philadelphia, where that party is filled with people like DA Larry Krasner and Mayor Jim Kenney. Their principles are anathema to me. But the GOP abandoned the principles I loved.<\/p>\n

And so, I abandoned them.<\/p>\n

Christine Flowers can be reached at cflowers1961@gmail.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n

via:: Post Independent<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

With so much happening in the world, you probably don\u2019t want to read about my own personal dark night of the soul. But at the risk of sounding narcissistic, I do think there is some value in examining why a person like me would feel compelled to leave the Republican Party. It was only four […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[160],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1316204","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","category-local-news"],"acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-09-06 15:40:15","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"distributor_meta":false,"distributor_terms":false,"distributor_media":false,"distributor_original_site_name":"KSKE Ski Country","distributor_original_site_url":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske","push-errors":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1316204","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1316204"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1316204\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1316204"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1316204"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1316204"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}