PHILADELPHIA — Free markets, free trade and defending democracy, at home and abroad: that’s John Conway’s ideal version of the United States, led by the Republican Party. In 2024, it’s also a vision far removed from reality, former President Donald Trump’s conquest of the GOP having been fully actualized, his party critics long since replaced by members of his family and others more loyal to him than the principles, however romanticized, of traditional conservatism.

Conway, director of strategy for the group Republican Voters Against Trump, is fully aware of that. He just doesn’t think that he and other conservatives should accept their party being taken over by a 78-year-old with a dubious grasp on what it takes to be a leader — “a disgusting character who doesn’t represent the best of America” — and a record of putting his own interests ahead of the republic.

“Donald Trump has really fundamentally changed what the Republican Party stands for and what the Republican Party is,” Conway said in an interview. “If you look at an issue like Ukraine, it’s unimaginable to think of a Republican Party that has taken such an isolationist turn and that doesn’t support Ukraine in their fight against Vladimir Putin.”

It’s more Russia’s GOP than Ronald Reagan’s, as Conway sees it. And he’s not alone: Outside Independence Hall, Salon spoke with a literal busload full of disaffected Republicans who plan to take their party back — by voting blue in November. It’s part of a tour of battleground states organized by RVAT, which is itself a project of the Republican Accountability PAC founded by conservative Sarah Longwell, publisher of The Bulwark and a former chair of the Log Cabin Republicans.

Voting for Vice President Kamala Harris does not come easily to those who have never voted for a Democrat before. But “we have to value our democracy above short-term policy goals,” as Conway put it. “We can always change direction in the future. What we can’t do very easily is change the damage that Donald Trump does to our democratic institutions.”

The bus tour is essentially meant to give other conservatives a pass — permission to vote for a liberal, at least just this once, to protect the Constitution from a man who issued a call to “terminate” it. Outside Independence Hall, where the RVAT bus stopped Thursday, Salon spoke to more than a half-dozen people who voted for Trump once, if not twice, but said they can’t bring themselves to do it again. Some said they were tricked by his anti-establishment rhetoric, only to realize he was just another politician looking out for himself; others always knew he was a charlatan, they said, but voted for him anyways because voting for Republicans is just what Republicans do.

Their stories — why they voted for Trump, why they broke from him and why they think other Republicans should do the same — are presented below, edited for clarity.

Ursula Schneider, 52, is an artist from Tucson, Arizona:

I was a Republican for 30 years. I just had been part of the party all of my life — I was an evangelical conservative Christian. When Trump came along, I didn't like him. I had known of Trump for many years, of course, but I always thought he just seems kind of crass and rude and all of that. But I was a Republican, and I had been indoctrinated in all the Republican rhetoric about how Hillary was the devil and she was terrible and we couldn't possibly have her in office.

After he got elected, I started to pay attention and I began to really see how he was fomenting hate among Americans. You know, rather than just people disagreeing on politics, now people were, like, literally hating one another because they disagreed, and that didn't fit with my core values.

And then when January 6 happened, it was like, ‘Oh my God, we are going to lose our country. Our whole nation is just going to be done. We are going to have a civil war.’ It was very frightening. I live in a rural area. People have signs all over about, you know, ‘Welcome to Trump Hill’ and ‘Don't tread on me’ kind of stuff. And I became aware that I can't even let my neighbors know my political opinion. I wouldn't even put a sign in my yard, because there's people who are threatening. I'm a gun owner — I'm not anti-gun — but you can't even drive down the road in the community where I live without people being threatening.

Just that whole kind of conglomeration of people really fomenting hate; like he started it, but everybody else kind of glommed on and it seems like until he is done, we won't be able to heal this rift that has developed in our nation. I think our nation needs people from both sides of the fence and all the different opinions need to come together. That's what I saw Joe Biden working towards. My first Democratic vote ever was Joe Biden in 2020 and my husband and I both are planning on voting Democrat down the ballot because I don't trust the Republican Party anymore.

I think that [we] may not have the opportunity to vote again in the future. I think we can live through a season where policies are made that we don't agree with. I don't think we can live through a season where we lose democracy altogether and the right to vote. And I mean, if I'm being 100% honest, I'm concerned we're moving towards fascism. That sounds extreme, but everything that I see Trump doing and his people through Project 2025 and all of that looks an awful lot like other autocracies that have formed over this last century. And I think people need to get educated and understand this isn't just another election because you like this set of policies or that set of policies. This really is a fight for democracy.

Rebecca Foster, 47, is a paralegal from northeast Florida:

Change. Being an outsider. The whole ‘drain the swamp’ thing got me. I was apathetic for years before that. 2016 might even have been my first election. I was just ready for the same thing I'm ready for today: change. Washington's broken. It's time to at least pretend like we want to try to fix it.

I'm an independent. I've always been not affiliated with any party. I'm just ready to see this country move into its full capabilities, you know. We have so much potential and I feel like things just became real stagnant, very stale. And there was a bunch of people in Washington that just are wrestling with letting go. I get it. They've been there forever, but it's time.

[But I broke from Trump] pretty quick. What did it for me was the separation of children and their families at the border. Immigration still really isn't a huge issue to me. I mean, I do know that we have a problem. We need to vet better, we need the resources, we need the judges. But to see that was so visceral and so human, and that was it. That's really what did it. And, you know, over COVID, it was almost like, wait a minute, nobody's gonna say anything about just the speech, the rhetoric, the up is down and down is up, and the gaslighting pretty early on. So, yeah, I've known for a long time that I made a huge mistake.

After 2016, we learned ‘drain the swamp’ — sure, drain the swamp of who is there, but his intention is to bring in other people to milk the same resources. I think it’s been well proven. “Let me get rid of you so we can take advantage.”

Kyle Sweetser, 35, is a contractor from Mobile, Alabama:

So in 2016 I supported him. Immediately I voted for him in the primary. I felt like he appeared to be trying to give a voice for people, like from my area, like from Mobile. A lot of people down there view themselves as left behind by the political system, really. I guess we didn't have that connection to politics, and a lot of these other areas, especially up in the Northeast, and everyone's interconnected. They're kind of cut off in a lot of rural areas, and I think that has a lot to do with politics.

Originally, I liked some of his tough talk. I liked the fact that he ran on Reagan's MAGA slogan, ‘Make America Great Again’ slogan. However, he is a polar opposite Reagan now so it’s kind of like a betrayal of that. So, to people like me, when he would say things that were slightly crazy, you thought there was some kind of political tactic. And there's still a lot of people that think when he says crazy things to whatnot, there's some kind of special strategy. And that's kind of how he has a lot of people. They think that he knows what he's doing. Come to find out, it doesn't seem like he knows what he's doing at all.

Tribalism and breaking out that — being in a deep-red area, basically being more in that area where everyone is like that — it takes more than a singular thing. But for me, it was the tariffs. There was no real outreach to businesses and then seeing the tariffs and how they affected things and how our supply chain was messed up back in 2018, 2019, before COVID even hit. Finished steel products: those products doubled in [cost in] construction. And when you go and you talk to customers say, ‘Hey, things are going up,’ and there's Trump's not coming out, or his administration's not coming out, and saying, ‘Hey, this is, you know, going to make things cost more and creates a bunch of problems.’ Well, that was the first thing. And then I really started to pay more attention to him. I started to pay attention to things that he said.

In 2020, I held my nose. Didn't think he would ever run again, especially after January 6. I thought it was over. But after January 6, after Ukraine, and it was apparent he was going to run again, I started paying attention to geopolitics a lot more, and started to go back on some of the things that Trump said, some of his foreign policy positions. He kind of started out like with the NATO thing, you know? He started out saying, ‘Hey, we just want them to pay more.’ It's a sales tactic. And he's slowly conditioning people away from from really a global economy into isolationism.

I think there's some people you can win over and there's some people you can't win over. I think the people that you can win over are people that care about foreign policy. They're people that care about conservative economic and trade policy. And at this point, really, I would say American economic, trade and foreign policy — things that we've done for a while, that Democrats and Republicans have agreed on, Trump's moving away from and really he has radical positions there.

Ethan Lenz, 56, is an attorney from Portage, Wisconsin:

I did not vote for Donald Trump in 2016. I wrote in Paul Ryan because I didn't believe Donald Trump was a real conservative. I got sucked in and largely voted with my pocketbook in 2020 and I've often said now that it's the only time I've ever been embarrassed by a vote I've made in my lifetime. January 6 was the end of Trump. For me, I never really did believe he was a real conservative. I don't believe he's a real conservative now — I think he's even less of a conservative now.

I was never, you know, big on Trump. I was never big on the Trump Train or MAGA. Like I said, I voted for him but January 6 was completely, as far as I was concerned, that completely disqualified him from ever being anywhere near the Oval Office again.

My argument and my true belief, and a big part of why I joined this movement and will vote for Kamala Harris this time around, is because I don't believe Donald Trump is a conservative at all. And if he gets back, if he wins this election, there will never be a true conservative alternative for the American people again, because it's going to be a bunch of copycat mini-me Donald Trumps, who are going to keep peddling this populist garbage that has no basis in real conservative values at all. And so this is for me, at my age, I see it as the last hurrah if there's any chance we're ever going to have a real conservative alternative and real conservative movement in this country again in my lifetime. Donald Trump has to go.

I'm from the party of Reagan. I describe myself as a fiscal conservative, a foreign policy and military hawk and a social moderate. The Republican Party used to hit two of those three; at least the first two of those three. Donald Trump doesn't come anywhere near hitting either one of the first two of those any longer, which are the most important issues to get. He's not a fiscal conservative. He only understands how to mouth ‘cutting taxes.’ Doesn't understand, never had the intestinal fortitude, to cut spending. And I don’t know what he is on foreign policy. His foreign policy — it makes me sick.

Jennifer Weinstein, 53, is an attorney and stay-at-home mom from Manchester, Vermont:

Back in 2016, the initial appeal was he wasn't Hillary. And I honestly felt that he would get in and the other Republicans — the other adults in the room — would keep the reins in. I thought that he just wanted to be in to say ‘I'm king.’ [Originally] I'm from New York, so I had known Donald Trump, and my parents are from Queens, so I knew the whole shtick that he brought, and I thought that that's all it was — a shtick. And then all of a sudden he's in office, and he doesn't let it go. The whole Russia thing, and now it's snowballing and all of a sudden I'm realizing, he's not serious [but] he's also dangerous, because he's not thinking of the country, he's not thinking of other people. He is wanting to be king, which is what I thought, but I didn't think that other people would support him, no matter what.

And so after the impeachments, I mean, there was no question, even hearing what he did on the call [with Ukraine’s Volodymr Zelenskyy], there was no question that I was never gonna vote for him [again]. And I could not believe that the RNC put him up, so I voted for Biden — the first time I voted for a Democrat. I'm not a registered Republican, just unaffiliated, but I had always voted Republican, but Biden was a vote against Trump, and Harris is going to be a vote against Trump.

Trump — the way he handled COVID was insane, absolutely insane, and makes me nuts … How many people would not have ever gotten it. Who knows how it would have spread if he took it seriously? I mean, people forget when he said, ‘Oh, it's going to be over by Easter.’ And that was exactly when he was learning the exact opposite. So all trust is gone. I don't know how to convince other people now [who are] still by him. I think that, honestly, it's just racism, because there is no articulate answer to what is he going to bring to the team.

[This is not about] a few policies here and there. I think that Trump has shown, and I don't want to sound like an alarmist, but I think he's shown that he can radically change [America]. And that is why it's so important to keep him out. If my taxes are 5% higher or 5% lower, you know that's not going to really change our lives. But him coming in and getting rid of the Department of Education, him coming in and getting rid of the SEC, him coming in and, you know, allowing states to track women, or whatever was going on with the abortion stuff, that's going to radically change who we are as a country.

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Danny Sims, 61, is a public relations professional from Abilene, Texas:

I first voted for a Republican president, the first time I voted for president, in 1984: Ronald Reagan. And I voted for Reagan [again] and [George H.W.] Bush and Bush, and then I voted for [Bob] Dole, and then I voted for [George W.] Bush and Bush, and then I voted for [John] McCain, and then I voted for [Mitt] Romney, and then I voted for Trump. Because that's what I did — I'd always voted Republican, so I have a sterling record of voting for white men. And I'm embarrassed I voted for Trump in 2016 because I knew better, because I started to already be really disgusted with him after the ‘Access Hollywood’ tape had come out, and he talked about grabbing women, bragging about it in such a horrible way, and then later saying it was ‘locker room talk.’ So I began feeling like I could not look my wife and daughter in the face and support a man like that. I kept thinking, if a man said that about my wife or daughter, I'd punch him in the face. I'm not a violent person, but it's just outrageous, and yet, there I was voting for him, so I was really ashamed of that. And though I'm a conservative, particularly fiscally a little more socially liberal, but even in those days, I thought Trump matched that appeal.

By the time 2020 came, I admitted, in my mind, I could not support Trump again. I would not vote for Trump again. And I really wasted my vote. I didn't want to vote for Biden. And I think, honestly, I think it's almost like a congenital thing. I never voted in the general election for a Democrat for president. I had voted for Democrats in the past, but not for president in the general; I crossed over and voted in primaries, but never in the general. So I didn't vote for Biden, and I regret that for two or three different reasons, but I was resolved this time. I just said, ‘Okay, whoever the Democrat is going to be, I'm going to vote for him.’ But I did not want to vote for Biden. He had just aged so much. I felt he was really teetering. My father-in-law is almost the same age as Biden: I could not imagine my father-in-law being president. It sounds like a punchline, and it's not.

So I didn't know what to do. I wasn't excited. When he finally stepped out of the race in July, again, I was in this weird place. I was not excited about Kamala Harris. I thought the Democrats are in a bit of a bind. They should have a process. Long story short, it didn't take too long, and largely it was because of the comparison between Trump and Kamala Harris. I started to really like Kamala Harris, again, because of my dislike for Trump. The more I listened to her, the more I respected her, the more I respected how I could agree to disagree with some of her policies. I think the most conservative president is going to moderate toward the center and the same is true for the most liberal. So I started to really like Kamala Harris.

I think of it almost like a freeway: Which lane do you want to choose to find your opposition to Trump. His misogyny? His racism? National security advisers and generals and chiefs of staff have said, ‘Don’t vote for this guy, don’t support this guy’ — one of whom, Mark Milley, a Marine and a man’s man, has said he’s the most dangerous person I’ve ever known or seen. Another Marine, ‘Mad Dog’ Mattis, has said very similar things. Rex Tillerson. This goes on and on.

But you don’t want that lane? Well, let's go over to the lane of grifting. What kind of president sells Bibles, gold shoes and a $100,000 watch that may never be on the market, that you may never actually be delivered, but you can buy it today through Bitcoin? That means you're making a $100,000 donation to Trump that can't be traced. That is the ultimate grift. You don't want that.? Okay, well, let's talk about his daughter and son-in-law getting billions from the Saudis. You don't want to talk about that, okay? I mean, he just never stops: his convictions, his indictments, January 6 — he encouraged a rabid insurrection and then, in real time, refused to do anything to stop it, and now has promised if elected again, he'll pardon those who did it. What kind of world is this?

My wife teaches middle school math and she says that Donald Trump could not get a job at her school as a teacher, as a substitute, as a receptionist — he could never get a job at her school as a hall monitor, he could not get a job at her school serving food in the cafeteria line. And if he was a student at her school and said the things he says and behaves the way he behaves, he would be in detention, in perpetual detention, in super detention, and ultimately kicked out of school. Now think about that: He wants to be president, right? And 40-something percent of our country supports him, right? They're willing to have a lower standard for the president than they would have for their own elementary or middle school staff.

I would say it's time to grow up. It's time to quit pretending. It's time to speak. Seek the truth, say the truth, seek the truth, and do the truth. And it's time to disavow Trump. He's s a horrible influence. You would not, if Trump behaved this way as a 16-year-old and drove up to take your daughter out, you would not let your daughter go out on a date with him. If you had to leave your kids with somebody for a weekend, you would not leave your kids with him. Why should he be president of the United States?

Dave McHenry, 64, is an Army veteran from St. Louis, Missouri:

I've always been a Republican. I'm still Republican. … I believed in the Republican Party. He was the nominee. I voted straight ticket, all the way back to Reagan. I was just, ‘Well, Hillary Clinton was abhorrent.’ She violated classified documents [handling with her private email server]. Little did I know Trump was gonna do the same thing. There's no excuse. In the military, I dealt with classified documents. If I would have done anything like that, I'd be in jail. So that really ticked me off.

It was easy to vote for him in 2016. Was I surprised he won? Yes. 2020 was a little different. I'd been defending him. I read the Mueller report. Yes, he tried to violate the law. [But] I would make excuses for him. ‘Well, he didn't actually, people didn't obey him,’ right? That's a weak excuse. That was my excuse. So I voted for him again in 2020.

But January 6, everything changed. I'm military. I swear an oath to the Constitution. When you swear an oath, in my mind, you swear. You swear. There's no time limit on it. When you get married, you swear. No, you're supposed to fulfill it to the best of your ability. Oaths should have meaning. So, yes, that was it. It took me probably about nine months [after Jan. 6] to realize, yes, I've been lied to. It took a while. I was just sitting there waiting. I was waiting for all this evidence come out. Where's the evidence? Where's the evidence? They kept saying this — lawyers would come out, [Rudy] Giuliani, "All this stuff's gonna happen." Never happened. Then, I go looking back: You faked electors in what, five states? Not one, five. You try to get the vice president to leave the city so [you could steal the election]? Man, that’s out and out. That man needs to go to jail for that.

Overthrowing the government is not a riot [like followed some Black Lives Matter protests]. I was buying the riot narrative, but it wasn't riot. That was an insurrection. We tried to take over the government. That's an insurrection.

When you go to the military, you don't do it because you get a good paycheck. When you go to church and you do volunteer work in South America, you do it for the greater good. If you're a volunteer, like I am at Salvation Army, you do for the greater good. These people [Republicans] do stuff for the greater good all the time. Now, suddenly it's about the price of gasoline? It's about the inflation? Step out of it, dude. This is our country. He did it before; he's definitely gonna do it. When somebody shows you who they are and you still ignore it, then you're the fool — I'm not gonna say they're the fools, but when you ignore stuff — we’ve been going through this for years, non-stop lying, when is enough enough? This is like an abusive relationship. "Hey, let me pack up your stuff and you leave him. Yeah, I'll get you to a halfway house."