Business Insider senior editor Josh Barro tweeted, “F–K it, I’m out,” with a link to an article explaining why he left the GOP to join the Democratic Party on Sunday – and just like that, the Republicans had one less member.
“The most important thing we have learned this year is that, when the Republican Party was hijacked by a dangerous fascist who threatens to destroy the institutions that make America great and free, most Republicans up and down the organizational chart stood behind him and insisted he out to be president,” Barro wrote in Business Insider.
He explained that, “Some did this because they are fools” while others “were naïve enough to believe he could be controlled and manipulated into implementing a normal Republican agenda.”
Barro went on to list another group of Republicans, such as Paul Ryan and Ted Cruz, who “understand exactly how dangerous Donald Trump is, but who have chosen to support him anyway for reasons of strategy, careerism, or cowardice.”
The Business Insider editor and former Mitt Romney staffer said he wasn’t a conservative and his “registration change was probably overdue,” but thought the GOP was where he “was more likely to be able to improve ideas at the margin in the long run.”
“Being a member of a party does not obligate you to vote for its bad candidates in the meantime,” Barro wrote. “But what this election has made clear is that policy is not the most important problem with the Republican Party.”
He said, “I can’t be a part of an organization that creates that kind of risk,” and said he became a Democrat instead of an Independent because, “political parties are key vehicles for policy-making, and choosing not to join one is choosing to give up influence.”