My view on political parties in general is they all have a constituency, they work to serve that constituency to the extent they must to continue being voted in, and morality beyond doesn't have much to do with their behavior. To the extent parties can maintain the vote of their constituencies / coalitions by demonizing the other instead of actually delivering, all the better. I've watched things quite closely for many years and all I conclude is parties are amoral entities. I don't pay as much attention to the theater now as I used to, but I know what's going on.
I don't have loyalty to any party, but I do make the pragmatic choice you're speaking of when elections come around and even donate to candidates, usually in Democratic primaries. I've voted for green or other candidates in the general elections for the past few cycles, though it doesn't matter in my district.
As for lefties being mean to me, trying to impute that I'm stupid, ignorant or fascist or complicit in this or that, I don't really care. My feeling is it reflects worse on them than me. I don't have to reduce all of reality to some Manichean conflict between good and evil. I find I like living in the world more without having to view roughly 50% of the population as horrible monster people who are voting for evil.
