What do you all think? Have any of you ever changed your party affiliation away from the party you prefer just to vote for someone more moderate in the primaries? Do you think it is a good or bad idea to do so? Is it immoral to be affiliated with a party you agree with less just to stop someone you dislike? Let me know, I have until February 9 to make a decision.
I switched from being a Democrat to a Republican in 2012, to vote in the open primaries in Wisconsin. In the Democratic primary, it was Barack Obama against some inmate in West Virginia and the outcome was a foregone conclusion, and there weren't any relevant contests locally either. Whereas in the Republican primary, it was Mitt Romney, who I thought would be a generally competent president, against Rick Santorum, who was my least-favorite of all the candidates from either party.
So I wound up voting for Romney in the spring and Obama in the fall.
Then I moved to Ohio and registered as an independent, and became a Democrat in 2016 when I first voted in primaries in Ohio. Ohio doesn't have an open primary, and my understanding is that from a technical standpoint, you are required to say that you agree with the official party line of the party you are registering with. In 2016, the GOP of Ohio's party line was that they sought to "repeal the failed policies of Barack Obama". I read about some people who switched to the GOP to vote against Trump (and usually for Kasich, being Ohio) and noted that they agreed that the
failed policies of Obama should be repealed, even as they supported most of his policies and believed few of them had failed. Whoever wrote the GOP's official party line had missed the grammar lesson on dangling modifiers.
So, personally/morally, I don't see a problem with it, particularly if you have strong feelings about one primary and not the other. And part of my reasoning is because when this does happen, it generally has a moderating effect, whereas most other incentives in the primary/two-party system instead encourage moving away from the center. If we had a multi (more than two) party system and ranked choice voting, I'd probably have a different opinion. But given what we have it is, as you say, one of the few options you have for saying, "I care more about the candidate not being [insert least favorite candidate here] than about it being my favorite candidate."
That said, I can see the argument for it to be justified, there should be at least a chance that you'd vote for the candidate you voted for in the primaries in the general election. In 2012, it was possible that Romney could have persuaded me to vote for him with a different campaign strategy, arguments, and set of promises; I was a split-ballot voter then. Nowadays, I wouldn't touch the lever to vote for a GOP candidate with a ten-foot poll; the taint from being associated with Trump is too strong. Even on the occasions when I believe the candidate themselves is a decent candidate, which Haley more or less is, I just can't do it. Perhaps some day that will change, but it would have to be several years after Trump left the political scene.