Nebraska GOP demands lone Republican who condemned white supremacy leave party

The Nebraska Republican Party wants to kick out John McCollister, a state legislator who recently condemned white supremacy in the wake of mass shootings in El Paso, Texas, and Dayton, Ohio.

“John McCollister has been telegraphing for years that he has little if nothing in common with the Republican voters,” Ryan Hamilton, executive director of the Nebraska GOP, said in a Monday press statement. The statement also called on McCollister to leave the Republican Party and “re-register as a Democrat.”

McCollister enraged Republican leaders by daring to criticize white supremacy and the role Republicans play in fostering the violent, hateful ideology.

“The Republican Party is enabling white supremacy in our country,” McCollister wrote on Twitter on Sunday. “As a lifelong Republican, it pains me to say this, but it’s the truth.”

McCollister does not believe every Republican voter is a white supremacist.

“What I am saying though is that the Republican Party is COMPLICIT to obvious racist and immoral activity inside our party,” he wrote.

He went on to specifically note Trump’s rhetoric in fanning the flames of racism and embracing the language of white supremacists.

“We have a Republican president who continually stokes racist fears in his base. He calls certain countries ‘sh*tholes,’ tells women of color to ‘go back’ to where they came from and lies more than he tells the truth,” McCollister said.

Such blunt and introspective language about his own party was too much for the Nebraska Republican Party to bear.

In response to McCollister condemning white supremacy and calling out a racist president, Hamilton said Republicans in his state are “happy he has finally shed all pretense of being a conservative.”

Trump has a long history of racism, including calling Mexicans “rapists” and alleging a federal judge can’t do his job because of Mexican ancestry. Trump spent weeks launching racist attacks against several members of Congress and has called neo-Nazis and white supremacists “very fine people.”

“We have Republican senators and representatives who look the other way and say nothing for fear that it will negatively affect their elections,” McCollister added.

“No more.”

Published with permission of The American Independent Foundation.