Confessions of a Republican Exile

Archive link.

A ridiculous number of the recent posts to this sub are me trying to convince conservatives not to vote for Trump.

Anyway, here are this guy's reasons:

[The] Republican relationship to truth and knowledge has gone to hell. MAGA is a fever swamp of lies, conspiracy theories, and scorn for expertise. The Blue World, in contrast, is a place more amenable to disagreement, debate, and the energetic pursuit of truth.

I’ve come to appreciate the Democrats’ long-standing tradition of using a pragmatic imagination. I like being around people who know that it’s really hard to design policies that will help others but who have devoted their lives to doing it well [...] Over the past four years, I’ve watched the Biden administration use pragmatic imagination to funnel money to parts of America that have long been left behind.

Another set of qualities now drawing me toward the Democrats: patriotism and regular Americanness.

But ultimately what’s pulling me away from the Republican Party and toward the Democrats is one final quality of Blue World: its greater ability to self-correct. Democrats, I’ve concluded, are better at scrutinizing, and conquering, their own shortcomings than Republicans are.