I put off switching to unaffiliated until I came across a letter that Ward Connerly sent me. I had sent him an email when he had threatened to leave the party. In the email he used Reagan's quote about the Democrats -- "I didn't leave the party. It left me."
I switched that afternoon. It was melancholy, mostly because the Republican party is such an unbelievable disappointment.
But, like I stated to LS, while I may in the future still cast my votes for the GOP candidate, to take that for granted is pure folly on the part of the GOP leadership. And for mainstream Republicans to continue to trash disenfranchised republicans that hold to principled conservative values is equal folly. But who said we didn't have the choice to engage in folly.
It has been my experience over the past two years that I did not make a mistake in becoming a "non-aligned" voter. But to each his/her own. These are choices we all get to still make on our own, so far.
Just think if the two major political parties did ever merge we could have our own version of a Nationalist Socialist Party. Hmmmmmm, seems there already was one of those in recent history.