How former senator Lincoln Chafee, who just quit the GOP, makes a decision:

Still, he said that when he was about to drop his membership in the party, he felt a twinge.
He’s still registered to vote in Exeter, where he and his wife, Stephanie, have a farm. He reports that when he walked into Town Hall and said he wanted to disaffiliate, the folks on hand — workers and perhaps people who’d stopped in to do business — put up a fuss and said, “This is sad. You can’t do this!”
In fact, he says, when someone asked if he was sure he wanted to go ahead, he said, “OK, let me think about it,” and he drove around for a few minutes to mull it over. He returned and said, “That’s what I want to do.”