What makes you believe that they are engaging with their religious views in good faith?
I know a great many friends and acquaintances that take their religious studies seriously. I also have met a great many more whose approach is far more cavalier, simply using their beliefs to justify their existing biases and gut feelings, as well as justifying and excusing their own anti-social behavior.
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I'm not thinking that Religion is the problem here.
That point of view still exists in the Republican Party, but it has been eclipsed by something sadder and smaller-minded. Liberal progressives have long used national greatness as a lever on patriotic conservatives, telling them, look, our "national greatness" comes from our embrace of education, cultural change, new people, new ideas. If conservatives love our supposed national greatness, they should embrace the progressive liberal ideals that built it. Now, it's like the Republican Party has been taken over by conservatives who... decided the liberals were right? It's like they gave up and said, y'all are right, national greatness requires education, continual learning and self-criticism, openness to new ideas and new people, and acceptance of creative destruction, both economic and cultural. They accepted that, grieved, faced the choice with clear eyes, and decided that national greatness isn't worth the cost. They look at Russia and see a country that is marinating in its own chauvinism, and they want that instead.
You sound like you don't know any decent Republicans who are really upset at what's happening. I do. They ought to be encouraged to speak up.
It really isn't anymore. I agree that there are many decent "old-time" Republicans, but they've been neutered and/or they've "self-deported" themselves from politics.
Romney might've been able to run and split the vote.
Bush the younger could've put his thumb on the scale, too.
Murkowski says "we are all afraid" [of MAGA].
Many traditional Republican congressmen have simply bowed out and not sought re-election.
McCain is dead.
The only one that I can think of that actually stood up is Liz Cheney.
To use a programming phrase, the country is in an "error state" and has been since 2017.
I don't know what the re-set is.
The fact of the matter is that "the party" is MAGA now, there is effectively no internal resistance, and mounting one is basically intractable. Trump won the primary with 80% of the vote despite "strong" opposition.
But now those "decent Republicans" vote Democrat. Their feeling about it, to repurpose a saying from a different context, could be summed up as, "We didn't cross the border, the border crossed us." They never wanted to be Democrats and still have a sentimental attachment to the Republican Party, but here they are.
