Former GOP officials ditch their party as it continues to stand by Trump
The party refuses to hold its defeated nominee accountable for anything.
Scores of Republican officials are reportedly leaving the party over its failure to hold Donald Trump accountable. This comes as the Republican Party at both the national and state level continues to rally around their defeated nominee — even as he faces a second impeachment for inciting an insurrection.
On Monday, Reuters reported that about 60 Republicans who worked in the George W. Bush administration are bolting from the party over its continued fealty to Trump.
“If it continues to be the party of Trump, many of us are not going back,” Rosario Marin, a former U.S. treasurer under Bush, told the wire service. “Unless the Senate convicts him, and rids themselves of the Trump cancer, many of us will not be going back to vote for Republican leaders.”
“The Republican Party as I knew it no longer exists. I’d call it the cult of Trump,” Bush’s former Undersecretary of the Treasury for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence Jimmy Gurulé agreed.
After his defeat in the November 2020 election, Donald Trump spent months falsely claiming he was the real victor, spouting lies about widespread voter fraud, and encouraging his supporters to mount a coup to keep him in power. On Jan. 6, thousands of his angry followers mounted a deadly attack on the Capitol, after he asked them to come for a “wild” protest.
Just 10 House Republicans voted to impeach Trump for his role in the insurrection. Last week, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy traveled to Florida to appear with Trump and pledged to work with him toward a “united conservative movement.” And 45 of the 50 Senate Republicans voted to block even holding an impeachment trial for Trump.
Meanwhile, state parties are moving to censure Trump critics, to canonize to the twice-impeached ex-president, and to make his birthday a holiday.
It’s not just former Bush officials who have had enough of their party’s unbroken embrace of Trump.
On Thursday, attorney Jacob Monty — a self-described “lifelong Republican” who has “given or raised more than $1 million for the GOP and its candidates” penned an opinion piece in the Houston Chronicle announcing his decision to join the Democratic Party.
“If my fellow Republicans are so blind they can defy reality and ignore the legal votes of millions of American citizens, there is no way I can convince them of the rightness of comprehensive immigration reform,” he explained. “There is simply no room for me in the GOP any longer.”
Last month, former Rep. Mickey Edwards (R-OK), also said he no longer identified with the party he once helped lead and has become an independent. “This has become a cult. It’s no longer a political party. It’s a cult. It’s the kind of a cult that when the leader of the cult does anything, no matter what it is, or how awful it is, they voted,” he told a local news outlet. “They voted to question the election results even after people came into the Capitol, tried to kill them and killed a police officer who was trying to protect them. And they did that.”
Then-Rep. Paul Mitchell (R-MI) left the Republican Party in December, calling the party’s failure to “stand up for democracy” simply “unacceptable.”
The departure of these once prominent Republican officials is being mirrored by thousands of rank-and-file voters across the country.
Tens of thousands of citizens have switched their voter registrations away from the GOP since the Jan. 6 attacks — including 9,944 in Arizona alone.
Published with permission of The American Independent Foundation.
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