...the G.O.P. has been taken over by the people it used to exploit.

I come from a fair amount of wealth (gone, all gone!) and my family on my father's side lived the life of the idle rich, and they were all republicans, naturally. My grandparents still retained all their good old fashioned rethug values right up to their deaths, including a quiet but strongly held belief that the non-rich worker type was scum of the earth. So were people of color and non-protestants. I was once warned that if I married anybody who'd been a waiter I'd be disowned. Anyhow, it has therefore amazed me to see who has aligned themselves with the party of the rich and why. Of course now the party IS those people and the rich are holding their noses while sending in their donations.

It's early and I can barely type so sorry if this is just rambling.

One interesting thing: my grandparents who grew up in the roaring twenties, were not anti-gay rights.

Hence their not being anti-gay. Republicans of late celebrate ignorance as if it were a point of pride and actually attempt to outdo each other in it.

Studies show that a persons level of bigotry is inversely proportional to their parents secondary education level. In short, the uneducated tend to breed bigots and the educated tend to breed offspring grounded in reality.

Of course not all education is formal. Staying well read and well informed also works wonders for fighting ignorance, another area that republicans of late tend to shun (reality).

They're playing to ever-smaller constituencies.