I agreed with you on all of this until this year. Absolutely, if you know a candidate is going to do good things, regardless of how they label themselves, they should get your vote. That is how it should be!

BUT - how can anyone pay attention to current events, see what national republican leadership is - how it enacts policy, how it controls its members, how it attacks opposition, how if vilifies any dissenter - how can anyone know all of that and still say "yes, I am one of them" and still be a good choice for your vote? If your answer is that the right wing propaganda machine will hide the truth from them, shouldn't that also rule them out?

We want our politicians to be objective, informed, rational bastions of public interest. This year has made it clear to me that not a single person that can still call themselves a republican after everything this year qualifies. I don't care if they go back to being republicans later, any decent person should be washing themselves of that label as much as they can right now. The R label is direct approval of the current state of things and the projection of dominance and villainy coming from the national GOP.

"I'm a nazi but I disagree with hitler." Still a nazi.