Disaffected Republicans Meet To Discuss Forming A New Political Party

Could it be? Is it finally happening? (albeit 5 years too late, IMHO).

Reuters reports, Exclusive: Dozens of former Republican officials in talks to form anti-Trump third party:

Dozens of former Republican officials, who view the party as unwilling to stand up to former President Donald Trump and his attempts to undermine U.S. democracy, are in talks to form a center-right breakaway party, four people involved in the discussions told Reuters.

The early stage discussions include former elected Republicans, former officials in the Republican administrations of Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, George W. Bush and Trump, ex-Republican ambassadors and Republican strategists, the people involved say.

More than 120 of them held a Zoom call last Friday to discuss the breakaway group, which would run on a platform of “principled conservatism,” including adherence to the Constitution and the rule of law – ideas those involved say have been trashed by Trump.

The plan would be to run candidates in some races but also to endorse center-right candidates in others, be they Republicans, independents or Democrats, the people say.

Evan McMullin, who was chief policy director for the House Republican Conference and ran as an independent in the 2016 presidential election, told Reuters that he co-hosted the Zoom call with former officials concerned about Trump’s grip on Republicans and the nativist turn the party has taken.

Three other people confirmed to Reuters the call and the discussions for a potential splinter party, but asked not to be identified.

Among the call participants were John Mitnick, general counsel for the Department of Homeland Security under Trump; former Republican congressman Charlie Dent; Elizabeth Neumann, deputy chief of staff in the Homeland Security Department under Trump; and Miles Taylor, another former Trump homeland security official.

The talks highlight the wide intraparty rift over Trump’s false claims of election fraud and the deadly Jan. 6 storming of the U.S. Capitol. Most Republicans remain fiercely loyal to the former president, but others seek a new direction for the party.

The House of Representatives impeached Trump on Jan. 13 on a charge of inciting an insurrection by exhorting thousands of supporters to march on the Capitol on the day Congress was gathered to certify Democrat Joe Biden’s election victory.

Call participants said they were particularly dismayed by the fact that more than half of the Republicans in Congress – eight senators and 139 House representatives – voted to block certification of Biden’s election victory just hours after the Capitol siege.

“Large portions of the Republican Party are radicalizing and threatening American democracy,” McMullin told Reuters. “The party needs to recommit to truth, reason and founding ideals or there clearly needs to be something new.”

McMullin said just over 40% of those on last week’s Zoom call backed the idea of a breakaway, national third party. Another option under discussion is to form a “faction” that would operate either inside the current Republican Party or outside it.

Word of Advice: Factions aren’t effective, just ask the Democrats.

Names under consideration for a new party include the Integrity Party and the Center Right Party. If it is decided instead to form a faction, one name under discussion is the Center Right Republicans.

Dude, you guys really don’t get marketing. Those brand names suck. Keep it simple. See the cartoon above.

Members are aware that the U.S. political landscape is littered with the remains of previous failed attempts at national third parties.

“But there is a far greater hunger for a new political party out there than I have ever experienced in my lifetime,” one participant said.

The Washington Post adds, Dozens of former GOP officials reportedly met last week to discuss mounting a new anti-Trump party:

The call came as Trump maintains an enduring grip on the GOP even after his loss in November and incitement of a short-lived insurrection last month. A recent Post-ABC News poll found 56 percent of Republicans said Trump bears no responsibility for the Capitol attack, and a majority of Republicans said GOP leaders did not go far enough to back his baseless claims of fraud. [Collective insanity]. Most GOP senators backed Trump by voting against moving forward with the trial.

But the talks are another sign of the deep divisions in the party, which has been split apart by power struggles after Trump’s defeat. Last week, Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) survived a challenge to her role as the third-ranking House Republican over her vote to impeach Trump.

Trump’s lasting influence in the party helped spark the meeting last week, McMullin said. Roughly 120 former officials called in, McMullin said. Reuters reported it confirmed those figures with three others who participated in the call, and said the group included John Mitnick, Trump’s general counsel for the Department of Homeland Security; former Pennsylvania congressmanCharlie Dent; Elizabeth Neumann, deputy chief of staff at DHS under Trump, and Miles Taylor, who also worked at DHS under Trump.

While the call included discussion of forming a new party, only about 40 percent of those on the call appeared to support that course of action, McMullin said. The rest argued they could have more impact by nurturing the anti-Trump faction within the GOP.

He said the former officials were split between those who wanted to keep operating strictly under the GOP, and those wanting to back independent Republicans “willing to support Democrats [and Independents] when facing extremist Republicans in general elections.”

* * *

McMullin said the meeting left him convinced that the anti-Trump wing of the party was motivated to address “extremists.”

Have you been to Arizona?

“There is an extremist wing of the GOP party that has taken the party over,” McMullin said. “Certainly, former president Trump is the leader of the extremist wing of the Republican Party, but he’s not the only one. There are plenty who have joined him in Congress or elsewhere and there are many more who are silently going along.”

As Dana Milbank recently wrote, This Republican Party needs to go the way of the Whigs:

If any good could possibly come of the Trump-incited mob’s murderous attack on the United States Capitol, and the people’s representatives therein, it would be the demise of this Republican Party.

[T]he whole world saw the defeated leader of this Republican Party use the awesome powers of the presidency to instigate an insurrection against the legislature — a coup attempt, plain and simple. After the last time Republicans lost the presidency, in 2012, they famously held an “autopsy” to see what had gone wrong. This time, President Trump went straight to the cremation, throwing the Capitol, with Vice President Pence in it, onto the funeral pyre.

So many sounded the alarm for so long about Trump’s authoritarian instincts and violent rhetoric. For years, he instigated threats and violence against journalists (“enemy of the people”), racial and religious minorities, immigrants and Democrats. Yet Republicans excused him, defended him, enabled him. Now, in defeat, the autocrat showed the world his true colors and mobilized violence against Congress, Republicans included, and his own vice president.

What Trump’s mob did to the Capitol — the first time the seat of American government had been sacked since the War of 1812 — was evil. It was murder. It was domestic terrorism. It was sedition. And, yes, it was treason.

Yet what Trump’s Republican allies were doing inside the chambers of Congress at the time of the attack — Trump’s justification for inciting the riot — was just as seditious: They were attempting to overturn Joe Biden’s election as president, overrule the voters and install Trump, by fiat, for another term.

This Republican Party needs to go the way of the Whigs.

The GOP was born, from the ashes of the Whigs, under similar circumstances. The Whigs in 1848 jettisoned their core principle — limited presidential power — in favor of political expediency. Instead of nominating one of their legendary statesmen — Daniel Webster or Henry Clay — the Whigs went with celebrity war-hero Zachary Taylor, an enslaver who was popular with Southerners but had no governing experience and no fealty to Whig principles. Taylor won, but he savaged Whig leaders and Whig doctrine. The party, split over slavery, dissolved.

In 2016, McGill University historian Gil Troy, presciently noting the parallel deal with the devil Republicans made with Trump, wrote in Politico: “Many Republicans might want to consider what is worse: the institutional problems mass defections by ‘Conscience Republicans’ could bring about — or the moral ruin that could come from the ones who stay behind, choosing to pursue party power over principles.”

Today’s morally ruined Republican Party knows the answer. “The ultimate challenge to the Republican Party is: Do they want to find their soul again? Do they want to be patriots again?” Troy told me this week. It comes down to whether “there are enough people in the party to say, ‘We’ve gone to the brink. How do we pull back?’”

[T]he seditious actions this week in Congress to overturn the election and overthrow the incoming Biden presidency provide a useful delineation: which Republicans have followed Trump off the cliff of authoritarianism and which still have some respect for democratic principles.

[E]ven after Trump’s mob brought siege and death to the Capitol, two-thirds of Republicans voted to overturn the election. They weren’t just the usual nutters — Jim Jordan (Ohio), Matt Gaetz (Fla.), Louie Gohmert (Tex.), Lee Zeldin (N.Y.) — but also House Republican leaders Kevin McCarthy (Calif.) and Steve Scalise (La.).

As long as such people remain in positions of honor, trust or profit under the United States, the Republican Party will not be a participant in constitutional democracy, but rather an entity dedicated to its destruction.

It’s time for the GQP to Whig out (of existence).