McCain/Palin voter bailing on GOP due to Trump's 'blunders, nepotism and racist rot'

In an op-ed for USA Today, a now-former Republican who said she cast her first presidential ballot for John McCain and Sarah Palin in 2008, said she is done with the GOP due to Donald Trump and is backing Joe Biden and Kamala Harris.

According to Ashley Pratte, who is a board member of Republican Women for Progress, she can no longer stand by a party that is headed by Trump, and is moving on after watching the Democratic National Convention last week.

Explaining her dilemma, Pratte pointed out that she is surprised that twelve years after voting for the GOP ticket that lost to eventual President Barack Obama and now newly-minted 2020 Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden she has changed camps and now identifies herself as an independent.

"This is the first year that I watched the Democratic National Convention without a Republican lens and found myself agreeing with the issues, speakers and most of all the positive rhetoric. The Democrats spoke of love and family, showing just how personal this election is for so many," she wrote. "In 2008, when I voted in my first presidential election, it was for Sen. John McCain and Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin. If you had told me that eight years later I would leave the Republican Party and that 12 years later I would be voting for Biden and Harris, I would have thought you were crazy."

Digging deeper into explaining her reasoning, she laid out her case against the Trump administration, after writing, "I believe that the Republican Party has truly lost its way and that it is on the wrong side of history."

"The past four years have been full of reckless policy, hateful rhetoric, authoritarian decision-making, lack of leadership, nepotism and blunder after blunder," she explained. "Think about all that has happened since 2016: the #MeToo movement, the Brett Kavanaugh nomination, the coronavirus pandemic, the impeachment investigation, an economic recession, the lack of decorum, and the rise of the #BlackLivesMatter movement as a result of police brutality and racial tensions in our country."

According to Pratte, Donald Trump "conned" voters into thinking he was going to "Make America Great Again, " but instead has dragged the country down into one its darkest periods.

"In the America of President Donald Trump and Vice President Mike Pence, women are photo ops and political props as they are continuously degraded and objectified and white privilege is glorified. In the America of Biden and Harris, women will have real seats at the table, and they will include women of color. Our country must value different voices and the perspective they bring, and the Biden-Harris ticket will do just that," she explained before hitting the Trump administration even harder by concluding, "What’s more, it will bring decorum and professionalism to the Oval Office — something that has been missing since Trump arrived. It’s high time to rid the White House of sexist and racist rot."

You can read the whole piece here.