Dear Commons Community,

Pulitzer Prize winning columnist. Bret Stephens who writes “Global View,” the Wall Street Journal’s foreign-affairs column, has a heartfelt column today entitled, My Former Republican Party:  The Democrats left my parents. Trump’s GOP has left me.  Here is an excerpt:

“I grew up with parents who liked the old line that they didn’t leave the Democratic Party—the Democratic Party left them. My father’s political heroes were Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman. My mother had been a campaign volunteer for Sen. Eugene McCarthyin 1968. But the party of George McGovern was not for them. As the left turned on “Amerika,” they kept faith in America.

Now it’s my turn to watch the Republican Party drift away. Whether the trend continues after the election remains to be seen, but already the GOP is largely unrecognizable to me. To see how far it’s fallen…

Where, in the apparently limitless forgiveness GOP voters are willing to extend to Mr. Trump for his public affronts to “that face” Carly or that “nasty woman” Hillary Clinton, is that Republican Party today?

I’ve become accustomed to the invariable gusher of letters that will follow this column, pointing out Mrs. Clinton’s well-known character flaws, along with apocalyptic visions of what her presidency might bring. Such deflections are the usual way in which people seek to justify their own side’s moral lapses. I don’t see the point of belonging to a party on the increasingly dubious assumption that it’s slightly less bad than the opposition. If I can’t get my Grand Old Party back, I’d rather help build a new one.”

There are many Republicans who are thinking the same thing.

Tony