This op-ed appeared last week in a small newspaper and got a pretty big response. I suspect that the author's feelings are all too common right now and it has to make Republicans nervous:

I supported the Iraq War in the beginning, but as its mismanagement grew, so did my disillusionment. Yet I remained a Republican.

Then the rains came. When the New Orleans levees gave way, so did my belief in the Republican Party. This was an American city, pulverized by nature - though with plenty of notice, unlike an earthquake - and although the local and state authorities (which were Democrats) reacted with monumental ineptitude, I had confidence that a Republican administration would get the situation under control and lead a swift rebuilding.

That hasn't happened. Instead, a great American city has been left to pull itself out of the mess while thousands of American citizens haven't been able get decent housing or assistance from the federal government, which is firmly in the hands of the Republicans. Maybe the Republicans were grossly incompetent or simply indifferent because most of the hardest-hit victims were poor or non-white or both. No matter what, a Republican administration showed itself to be either monumentally inept or cruelly, methodically callous.

Either way, I didn't want anything more to do with the Republicans. So I declared myself an Independent and have been so since.