On January 20th, 2009, just moments after Barack Obama was inaugurated to be the President of the United States, a group of Republican Senators and Representatives sat in the capitol and talked about their agenda over the next four years: to deny President Obama a second term. With that in mind, the GOP adopted a win at all costs strategy all before President Obama even stepped foot into the oval office. This strategy was centered in playing with a politics of fear mongering and hate that produced a candidate with an entire platform centered around fear mongering and hate.

The reason why this win at all costs strategy has not and will not work, is because Barack Obama wasn’t a candidate created by exploiting fear. He did what many a politician failed to do — he rooted his message in hope and change and sparked a movement behind him that was seemingly immune to fear. Barack Obama was not elected because people were scared of John McCain; he was elected because people were inspired. His brand of politics was designed to drive people away from the politics of hate, resulting in landslide victories in 2008 and 2012.

Regardless, this fear instilling style of politics planted seeds of hate around a country that was just waiting for a candidate to capitalize on them. I hate to say that Donald Trump was an inevitable candidate, but he was. The Republican party brand of politicking is to blame. The Republican party can talk all day long about how they want to beat Donald Trump. However, they created and continue to enable him. The GOP deserves Donald Trump, but please, spare the rest of us.

As a Democrat, I started out almost appreciating and relishing in Trump’s rhetoric. I’m a firm believer that Donald Trump was doing great things for our party — he still is — but the rhetoric has ceased to be entertaining and is now dangerous. For those of us who still think and vote with our brains and hearts in either party, Trump’s rhetoric is dangerous.

I’m not voting for Donald Trump, I am not voting for any Republican candidate in this election cycle, nor have I subscribed to the Republican politics of hate, yet I am still subjected to listen to his hate speech toward muslims, gays, women, immigrants, and veterans. Lately, those who were supposed to be the “reasonable voices” have even started talking about Donald Trump’s penis. We don’t deserve this.

Donald trump has left the Republican party looking for signs of life within itself. Trump has steamrolled through everything the GOP has thrown at him with no signs of Trump stopping anywhere. The truth of the matter is the party of Lincoln and Reagan is gone, not because Trump killed it, but because the Republican party has run so far away from its principles, that has allowed Trump to shake it to its core. The Republican Party has been long due for this rude awakening, but the rest of us do not.