Gay Republican candidate melts down when he figured out that his party is homophobic

Archuleta himself, though, has a history of anti-LGBTQ+ rhetoric. He previously blamed LGBTQ+ individuals for the Club Q shooting and said that queer people are “groomers” – or child sex abusers – a negative stereotype that has been used to justify hatred and discrimination.

Bruh.

Sounds like some deeply, deeply internalized self-hatred going on there.
- No, no. You see, he's just one of the good ones. If the rest of them were just like him, there wouldn't be an issue.
  /s
- Not necessarily? The dude is gay, LGBT+ and queer covers a lot more than gay. Maybe he just hates the other ones.
Something to think about is that there are men who see a benefit to gayness being something you can be social ostracized for, because it enables them to have gay sex freely with the knowledge that if there partners ever tell anyone about it they'll suffer repercussions.
- Sounds deranged. If it was NOT socially ostracized they would NOT need to rely on the partner being ostracized.

I'm baffled how anyone that isn't a straight white male with money convinces themselves they're part of the Republican Club.

All these people grasping at party acceptance are doing is screaming "hey I'm a piece of shit too!"

I'm a school bus driver and I work with a few Trump-supporting lesbians. It's no mystery why: they really, really hate black people and that hatred blinds them to any possible conception of their own self-interest. For good measure they're also staunchly pro-union.
- Bruh, same team, same fight.
  How could they not see how hypocritical that is?
- Yep, I know some women who consider themselves very feminist that are supporting the people who want to take away their right to abortions away just because they're really hate trans people.
- I know one gay republican. He's just a incredibly conceded person. Grew up in a toxic environment and that toxicity is normalized for him.
Most people will not admit to themselves that they are wrong.
It’s as simple as that.
We are all most people about something.

Did . . . did he ask anyone? I mean, basically anyone could have told him.

I question his fitness for office if he had no clue, they aren't shy about these beliefs and they have gotten less shy post trump.
- I mean... I question any Republican's fitness for office. This guy might be even denser than normal, but it's not as if he's that far from the GOP average.

Oh dude the shit I flipped when I figured out the cult I grew up in was a cult? It was not pretty. I get it.

“Messages of hate, bigotry, and government control over people’s lives are not Republican or Christian,” Republican Douglas County Commissioner Abe Laydon said with a straight face.

To give this dude credit, from the rest of the quote in the article it sounds like he's genuinely standing up against this sort of hate, and I expect it's at a very tangible personal cost. I find it almost unbelievable that anyone who genuinely opposes hate of a sort that's become a part of the absolute fabric of modern conservatism could still be a Republican, but apparently this dude is the exception. I hope he has the sense to get out now, but I'll take what genuine progress I can get given I've largely written off most conservatives as a lost cause.
- He's a conservative. He only opposes the hate that personally affects him.
- Sure, but this sort of tells you the core essence of that party. A lack of empathy. As long as it doesn't affect them personally, they're happy to ignore others' suffering.
Guy must have been in a coma since the small sliver of time in the 90s after Bush senior and before Bob Dole decided that the real enemy was teachers.

Tribal psychology is a helluva drug.

Stupid as this is, at least he worked it out? I'm a little impressed.

No he didn't:
...and arguing that they don't represent Republican views.
He's still in fucking denial.
- The gay Republican I know is also deep in denial. Sad to see in all honesty
- I'm just thinking. Isn't republic fancy word for representative democracy? As opposed to direct democracy.
  In representative democracy people vote for people who vote for law, while in direct democracy people vote for law.
Don’t be too impressed. He still a Republican.
- we should support any move in the right direction though, however small

Ahh log cabin republicans, too republican for the gays, too gay for the republicans.

Part of the effectiveness of the Republican Party as an institution is creating these little hot-house varieties of conservative that get to pretend they're secretly running things while everyone else is being made a useful idiot.
The billionaire plutocrats think they're outwitting the evangelicals. The evangelicals think they've corralled the neocons. The neocons are convinced they've duped the suburanites. The suburbanites are convinced they've carved out a Lebensraum that's safe from the ravages of corporate capitalism. Everyone is selling one another a bill of goods and hoping to get their slice before the pie is handed back to the Democrats.
- But they were all of them deceived, for another platform was made.
- Oof this is a good comment right here. Thank you for these thoughts
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=hcFEIW8Ev7s

In other news, Olympic swimming champion outraged when they found out that water is wet

So, I live in a European country where our right-wing politics would probably be considered "left" by Republican Americans.

I vote sort of central. Not too left, not too right. Even though I disagree with many things that our rightwinged politicians stand for, I can see some merit in them at times. The same with our left-leaning politicians.

When I see discussions among Americans, it seems to me either party just hates the other party, automatically calling them bigoted. And it comes across as a heavily divided country without any hope for reconciliation.

So 2 questions: Republicans: is there any democratic strength you wish your party would implement?

And democrats: is there any republican strength that you wish your party would implement?

The late, legendarily brutal campaign consultant Lee Atwater explains how Republicans can win the vote of racists without sounding racist themselves:
You start out in 1954 by saying, “N*****, n*****, n*****.” By 1968 you can’t say “n*****”—that hurts you, backfires. So you say stuff like, uh, forced busing, states’ rights, and all that stuff, and you’re getting so abstract. Now, you’re talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you’re talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is, blacks get hurt worse than whites.… “We want to cut this,” is much more abstract than even the busing thing, uh, and a hell of a lot more abstract than “N*****, n*****.”
https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/exclusive-lee-atwaters-infamous-1981-interview-southern-strategy/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_strategy
This is the foundation of the current Republican party. There is nothing redeemable.
- All the "I like Republicans' fiscal conservatism" people in this thread need to read this. "Fiscal conservatism" and "small government" are and always have been dogwhistles for racism and other forms of bigotry. "Government waste" does not refer to inefficiency in government spending, it's code for programs that help the poor and minorities.
  The core of Conservative ideology is a belief in the existence of natural hierarchy, where all people owe privilege to the wise and righteous beings above them and are obligated to punish those below for their inferiority. The Conservatives themselves, having designed this hierarchy, are oh-so-conveniently at the very top of it. Everything that Republicans do makes sense when viewed from this perspective.
I used to believe the Republican party brought much needed conservatism to the table. There were reasonable concerns that the Democratic party was too heavy handed with implementing morality and over reaching laws. The Democratic party has mostly been in the right side of social permissivness since then and the Republican party has gone fucking crazy Reactionary which they have rebranded as "Conservative". It has become an intersection dynamic where the Democratic party has become a coalition of progressives and conservatives, who just to want to keep the rights they have. Unfortunately there are many "Team R" fans that don't recognize that their party no longer represents them.
So short answer, the Democratic party has already absorbed the strengths of the Republican party.
- I wonder how much it is the parties changed and how much it is we changed as a people. When I was a kid it was a race to the middle, the majority of the population could vote either way. Now the middle is basically gone and power is from who can get their base motivated.
- And by "keep the rights that they have" they mean virtually unrestricted access to firearms and the right to discriminate against anyone they want protected by a thing guise of "religious freedom" that also magically protects them from discrimination of any kind.
And democrats: is there any republican strength that you wish your party would implement?
We had 8 years of Obama where he tried to meet them in the middle and that was a flop. I don't even know what they really stand for as it's always shifting. The only concrete things seem to be hurting other people. I ones I know in my personal life genuinely believe that things are only bad because the media keeps bring up police violence and inequality.
You should just read what the Republicans will do if Trump is reelected.
They've published their plans, and I want exactly zero of any of the "policy" they plan on implementing.
I wish Democrats were willing to put in the same amount of endless, ceaseless planning and toiling and preparing so when an opportunity arises, you can snatch it up. Republicans did this with the Supreme Court, with religion in schools, etc etc etc. Last time Democrats had both Houses and the Presidency, we got barely anything (to my memory at least).
I wish Democrats had an ounce of Republicans' ability not just to shape narratives, but to conjure them from thin air and still dominate the news cycle.
I wish Democrats were as willing to bend to the extremists in their own party as the Republicans do. That's a real monkey's paw wish right there, but at the moment the extreme right is literal fascists and the extreme left just wants the cool quality of life stuff the Nordic countries already have.
Speaking personally... yeah we ARE divided here in the US. It kind of IS that bad. There are a lot of reasons for it, but in my mind the biggest thing is the legacy of slavery in this country. It's not a scar... it's still bleeding because bigots keep picking the scab. There's been so many knock on effects from it that have gone unexamined and unaddressed because there are enough bigots to be a stupid but effective voting block.
I just searched for what the US Republicans actually want:
The positions of the Republican Party have evolved over time. Currently, the party's fiscal conservatism includes support for lower taxes, gun rights, government conservatism, free market capitalism, free trade, deregulation of corporations, and restrictions on labor unions.
No, absolutely no redeeming qualities here.
- Yeah that’s a REAL generous list if you look at the laws that they are actually pushing. Keep in mind they are passing laws at the state level mostly and preventing the federal govt from restricting it.
  It’s basically is the confederacy trying to “rise again” as they’ve always threatened.
  If they are not stopped politically it will lead to them being stopped violently just like their shitty forefathers were. The rest of us are trying everything we can to help their supporters understand what they are doing, but their propaganda has been strong for decades.
- Here's the GOP platform:
- Although I'm not a conservative myself, I still see a case to be made for a government that is "conservative". I.e. a government that doesn't respond with a law for every single small thing. There is a danger to turn a country into a bureaucratic nightmare. Where people will find loopholes in laws, and a government responds by patching that loophole up with another law or clause. A labyrinth of laws can and will cause suffering for people that are edge cases.
  Or do I read the term "government conservatism" wrong here?
- The parties don't stand for anything. They are self-preserving entities.
Courtesy of Roger Ailes and the invention of political talk radio, The United States was the breeding ground for media manipulation tactics that later arrived in Europe, and those have been most heavily utilized by right-wing actors -- think Sky News/The Daily Mail/The Sun in the UK, or instance. When you poll most people about what they want out of government here in the US, they tend to be in alignment with "liberal" values in the US or center-left parties in Europe, but when you ask them if they support implementations of those values by name (i.e., "Social Security" or "Medicaid" or "food stamps" instead of just asking "should the government help needy people stay fed and healthy?" people who consume right-wing media suddenly flip to be against those policies, because they are brainwashed by their media diet to oppose them even though in principle they express support for them.
Bottom line, after almost forty years of Rush Limbaugh and his ilk and thirty years of Fox News deliberately manipulating the American right to become hateful and reactionary in spite of their own natural impulses, the gap between left and right has become incredibly difficult to bridge in any meaningful way. IMO, the only hope for reconciliation is to push those extreme voices out of the mainstream in order to limit their ability to influence the gullible, and there's just not many viable mechanisms to do that.
Yeah, Biden and the DNC probably fall mid right in halls neck of the woods (or a neutral l/r spectrum at least)
I'm far more left than democrats, but I'm all for the conceptual Republican that doesn't really exist - somebody who wants to keep an eye on the balance of things, like ensuring govt contracts are on the level and priced appropriately instead of being massive handouts for billionaires on the taxpayer dime.
I do see a lot of merit in traditional Republican goals like fiscal conservatism, and most of my adult life have at least understood the Republican position and have even voted in their direction. However they seem to have been taken over by their more extreme reactionaries, that I can neither understand nor condone.
Now I think of the Democrats the way I used to think of Republicans. They’re a nice centrist or right leaning platform to help balance the Progressive polices we really need. Some of that’s a big swing to the left for me, but not all of it
I'm not a democrat, I'm far more left. But if there's something I'd like the Republicans to do, it's to actually repeal some of their laws and attempt to make the government a bit smaller and more efficient (without just removing funding/programs/departments). Currently, that doesn't seem to be happening.
- I'm far more left
  Note that "left" in the USA would usually be considered centrist or only slightly left in Europe.
- make the government a bit smaller and more efficient
  That used to be a core plank on the Republican platform and we can all use more of that. However over the last couple decades they’re more focused on the destructive part of that, and are all out of constructive proposals on how to make it work
Belgium?
- The Netherlands :)
I wish the Democrats would lay off the gun control.
Regarding taxes, both parties fail in different ways. Democratic tax policy fails at the Federal level - low/zero taxes at the Federal level makes sense because the Federal government hasn't needed to collect taxes since establishing the Federal Reserve banking system and moving off the gold standard. Republican tax policy fails at the State level - low taxes at the State level makes less sense, because the states actually need the money to pay for programs that market forces do not provide for.
Neither party is doing enough to make our military industry more efficient, less organizationally top heavy, and less corrupt. Spending resources on war is bad, but losing a war to tyrants like China or Russia would be worse. I want USA to have more weapons for less money.
Both parties fail when it comes to welfare programs. Republicans would implement sadistic and self-destructive abolition of all safety nets. Democrats craft welfare programs that pull the rug out from under people as soon as they start down the road toward financial stability, trapping people in poverty by removing the safety net too soon. For example, Medicaid is the only good healthcare available in this backwards nation, but you need to stay poor to get it - earn too much money and you'll end up poorer than when you started.
The problem with America is that they don't have left or right, they have two authoritarian parties, powered by corruption. And people fight each other over which type of authoritarianism is better.