If most were being honest, they would probably admit that the corrupt behavior like this is bad, but that the overall balance of good vs bad policy decisions still favor having Republicans in power vs Democrats.
Could really keep going forever. There's no point in listing all the crime or norms that have been destroyed. Maybe it's good that someone is exploiting all the edge cases and treating our country as a game to be won. I don't see it that way. I love my neighbors.
I'd rather see $1 billion lost to graft than $100 billion lost to bad policy. But I'll admit, Trump's flagrancy makes it hard to ignore.
I'm generally libertarian or classic liberal, so I agree with maybe 70% of Republican policy and 30% of Democratic policy (assuming those are the only two choices), but lately that's been shifting closer to 50/50.
What's objectionable about Democrat policy from the "libertarian or classic liberal" perspective?
Militarized police is definitely one of the areas I disagree with Republicans on, along with abortion restrictions.
As for thought crimes, it's a toss up IMO, but I view Democrats as more likely to try to legislate against them.
I'd like federal government to be a whole lot smaller with more things being left up to state and local governments, so that's why I tend to side with Republican policy more often, but they're not much better either.
If you pursue freedom, and individual liberty and are a US citizen, there's no way to consider GOP policy as providing more freedom or liberty. The only 2 areas I can think of where they even claim to be for freedom is: guns and freedom for corporations.
Then there's literally everything else: being a woman, not straight, not white, not Christian, an income tax payer, a property owner near an unregulated corporate entity, a person who likes sane people to have access to semiautomatic long guns, a person who enjoys drugs, a person who wants to buy or sell sex, ... etc
I don't think many people would agree with that. Other than their philosophical differences in their approach to dealing with externalities (classic liberals favoring preemptive regulations and libertarianism favoring compensation for damage to property rights), I don't see that much practical difference between them.
How on earth could you ever claim to be in favor personal liberty, and support GOP over Dems? GOP are literally trying to enforce a state religion at the federal level in 2026. The list of similar or worse infringements on liberty is truly unprecedented and for me, mind boggling.
Or let's ask the inverse: how do democrats infringe on your liberty or others?
Some examples:
- Starting a war with Iran even after being warned about consequences including the Strait of Hormuz and having the US in a worse position now than before.
- Deciding to end birthright citizenship, allowing race-based stops, and a slew of unconstitutional actions that are helped along by a GOP-appointed SCOTUS majority. This includes rulings under shadow docket so they don't have to explain themselves.
- Literally pretending the 2020 election was stolen and creating legislation like forcing states to provide voter data and targeting election results in a very partisan way.
- A hodgepodge of tariffs that seem to change at the whim of Trump and exert significant complications downstream including inflation.
- Undermining public funding of US research in the sciences in what seems to be an unconstitutional manner. Examples include withholding granted funds based on political interference.
- Completely politicizing DOJ and many other critical government departments to the point that even conservative career government employees resign noting politicization of their offices. This is one reason we see such obvious corruption -- because the watchdogs can't investigate let alone prosecute people favored by this administration (e.g., Epstein files).
- Degrading US health care policy substantially with RFK Jr and bad appointments in a number of positions.
All of the above are well-supported by court cases, investigative reporting, and even official declarations by this administration. What happened to the fundamental belief in the GOP of executive restraint, state vs fed power, fiscal discipline, free-market trade, rule of law, and democracy?
Can you name those policies? I see the most corruption and least accountability of "public servants" that I've ever seen. It is blatant corruption and the party in power, the Republicans, are fully supporting it.