Republicans who have lamented the Clintonian proclivity to malign women are now defending the same activities because … well, they idolize power or their own strategic cleverness. Trump, like the preacher, is too important to abandon. We have become what we said we despised.

I realize now — only now after all these years — it’s all been a facade. The “religious right,” which I’ve defended my whole life, abandoned the posture of “family values” when they had the chance to gain a seat at the table.

Here’s the truth. The GOP once was alive but is now dead. It confuses me to hear the values preached from the podium but ignored in real life; it feels odd to just repurpose a political party into an extension of the trump Empire without acknowledging the values which had so recently dwelled there.

My party — which should’ve been a place of a certain set of values — now shelters an abuser. I’m thinking of this when the GOP presses against me and asks me to close my eyes just one more time.