For 10 years I enthusiastically carried the Republican banner: as an activist, as the congressional nominee from New Hampshire’s 2nd District, as a two-term chairman of the New Hampshire Republican Party, and as a member of the Republican National Committee’s Executive Committee under the leadership of Reince Priebus. I spent those years extolling the virtues of the party of Lincoln, articulating those values that I believe make America the greatest nation on earth: freedom, equality and unlimited opportunity.

Republicans, I daily declared, were best positioned to preserve and expand those foundational American principles.

My heart breaks as I sit here today in the final moments of a slow, three-year realization that the party of Lincoln is nearly dead, consumed by the ugly, destructive conduct of a dishonest, corrupt man who wears the stolen badge of Republicanism, transforming a once-great party into a racist nationalist movement that uses hate and fear to divide and destroy.