No one in their right mind wouldn't want to punish the Republican party - especially to death.
Yeah. It needs to die.
The GOP needs to be taken out to the gravel pit and fed very fast, very hot buckshot until it stops moving.
But because we can't get away with using that weapon to do the job, we'll just have to use these icky Democrats instead. Even though the Democrats don't WANT the Republican party to die, we are using the tools we have to do what must be done.
for real though, that's exactly what happens if we can finish the republican party and bury it in the dustbin of history where it fucking belongs.
In any first-past-the-post electoral system, it will always settle toward there being two parties - how this came out the LAST two times America purged one of its two parties was that the remaining surviving party split.
So, after the GOP is well and truly DEAD, the Democrat party will massively recruit to fill the power vacuum and then it will begin to polarize. It will polarize into progressive and regressive factions, most likely. And when that happens, we all board the progressive train and systematically purge what remains of the old Democrats TOO.
At some point while this is going on, hopefully we can dismantle FPTP and replace it with proportional representation elected through ranked choice.