‘We must exorcise the demon’: Longtime GOP strategist publishes a devastating column as he registers as a Democrat

In an op-ed for the Tampa Bay Times this Friday, longtime Republican strategist Mac Stipanovich reveals that he has registered as a Democrat in the run up to the Florida presidential primary.

"I and a number of other long-time Republicans have re-registered so we can vote for the candidate closest to the center with the best chance of winning the Democratic nomination and defeating Donald Trump in November," Stipanovich writes. "Hopefully, that choice will be clearer after Super Tuesday, but it looks like Joe Biden or Michael Bloomberg today."

According to Stipanovich, no effort should be spared when it comes to his mission to "exorcise the demon that has possessed the soul of the GOP."

Stipanovich reminisced about the days when GOP candidates actually reflected conservative values. "...fiscal discipline, cultural conservatism, an engaged, forward-leaning foreign policy, free trade, personal accountability, a commitment to the rule of law and the idea of America as a Shining City on the Hill to which the world looks for leadership and where the dreams, energy and genes of immigrants beckoned by that shining light are welcome" -- all things of the past thanks to the "moral rot" that has crept into the GOP thanks to Trump.

Stipanovich admits that there has always been a "seamy underbelly" within the GOP of "paranoiacs, conspiracy theorists, radicals and racists" who historically were not taken very seriously. But thanks to the "pressure cooker of anger, angst and envy" over the last decade, "what had been a fairly small, fairly stable minority in the GOP metastasized."

"And Trump seized the moment," he writes. "In doing so, he did not so much transform the GOP as unmask it. It is no longer Morning in America. The optimism is gone. Damn the future. Let’s go back. Make America Great Again. But great when?"

Read his full op-ed over at the Tampa Bay Times.