‘This Is Not Your Father’s GOP’ – Time For A Stampede Away From The Party of Trump

Colbert King writes at the Washington Post, Trump killed the old GOP — and he’s getting away with the murder (excerpt):

[Liz Cheney] holds membership in a party that has devolved into a self-segregating, ideologically rigid cult that views outsiders as a threat to Trump and, by extension, themselves.

Trump is — in their hearts — owed the Republican Party’s devotion.

The only room for a Liz Cheney is in the house out back. A small but plucky bunch of GOP outsiders — whose leaders include former congressman Charlie Dent, former party chairman Michael Steele and former New Jersey governor Christine Todd Whitman (names from a long-gone era) — are weeping and wailing over Cheney’s ouster and huffing and puffing about blowing down the House that Trump built. Every good wish.

Today’s Republican Party is to Donald Trump what the Workers’ Party of Korea is to Kim Jong Un, the Chinese Communist Party is to Xi Jinping and the United Russia Party is to Vladimir Putin.

The party of Cheney, Dent, Steele and Whitman is dead. The death blow was landed by Trump. And he’s getting away with the murder.

Here is the “huffing and puffing” op-ed from the GOP old guard. The GOP has lost its way. Fellow Americans, join our new alliance.

The Republican Party made a grievous error this week in ousting Rep. Liz Cheney (Wyo.) from the House leadership for telling the truth about Donald Trump’s “big lie,” which has wreaked havoc in our democratic republic by casting doubt over the 2020 election.

Cheney rightfully struck back against party leaders and warned about the GOP’s dangerous direction. She is not alone.

Alongside dozens of prominent Republicans, ex-Republicans and independents, we are announcing “A Call for American Renewal,” a nationwide rallying cry against extremist elements within the GOP, and highlighting the urgent need for a new, common-sense coalition.

We urge fellow Americans to join us.

Our alliance includes former governors, members of Congress, Cabinet secretaries, state officials, seasoned political strategists and grass-roots leaders dedicated to offering a hopeful, principles-based vision for the country — and ensuring that our votes have decisive impact in key elections across the United States.

We want to give voice to the millions of Americans who feel politically homeless and mobilize them to help chart a new path forward for our country.

It is time for a rebirth of the American cause, which we will pursue in partnership and loyal competition with others committed to the preservation of our Union.

Tragically, the Republican Party has lost its way, perverted by fear, lies and self-interest. What’s more, GOP attacks on the integrity of our elections and our institutions pose a continuing and material threat to the nation.

The Jan. 6 insurrection was a wake-up call for many who had remained loyal to the party, even while harboring concerns about its direction.

Many have since left. The GOP has effectively become a privileged third party, ranking behind independents and Democrats in voter registration.

Meanwhile, Republican legislators are trying to impede voting rights across the country as a last-ditch effort to retain power.

We will not wait forever for the GOP to clean up its act. If we cannot save the Republican Party from itself, we will help save America from extremist elements in the Republican Party.

That means hastening the creation of an alternative: a political movement dedicated to our founding principles and divorced from the GOP’s obsessive cult of personality around a deeply flawed (and twice-impeached) man, whose favorability ratings are reportedly tanking in key swing districts around the country.

We will fight for honorable Republicans who stand up for truth and decency, such as Liz Cheney, Adam Kinzinger, Lisa Murkowski and Mitt Romney, to name a few.

But we will not rely on the old partisan playbook. We intend to work across party lines with other Americans to oppose extremists and defend the republic wherever we can.

Together with our patriotic allies in other parties, our movement will stand against fearmongers, conspiracy theorists and the opportunists who seek unbridled power.

We plan to invest in a deeper bench of effective leaders in cities and states across the country while recruiting a new generation of principled, pragmatic citizens to the cause.

Some no doubt will urge us to join the Democratic Party. We believe that inching toward a single-party system would be dangerous and would fail to represent the diverse viewpoints in our nation.

America cannot have just one party committed to preservation of its democratic institutions. [We already do.] There must be at least two, if not more.

With Cheney’s dismissal from House leadership, the battle for the soul of the Republican Party — and our country — is not over. It is just beginning, which is why we are forming a “resistance of the rational” against the radicals.

We still hope for a healthy, thriving Republican Party, but we are no longer holding our breath.

Next month, we will convene a nationwide town hall open to all Americans and featuring current and former U.S. leaders who will lay out where we must go from here, how we can ensure a freer America and how all citizens can join the fight.

Extremists may have fired the first shot in this moral struggle for America’s future, but with truth as our lodestar, those laboring to renew America will fire the last.

“Huffing and puffing” is an apt description. Never Trumpers have been doing this since 2015, leaving it to Democrats to save the nation from anti-democratic Trumpism, the new American fascism.

What this op-ed actually says is “We’re going to give you one more chance to come to your senses, and if not, then maybe we’ll form a new political party” – even after the Trump/QAnon cult has already crossed the line into sedition and insurrection that is still ongoing and a preset danger in Washington and state legislatures.  The Never Trumpers are holding onto a fantasy that their father’s GOP may yet still be barely alive, and that this moment is only a temporary aberration. It is not.

The Never Trumpers are deluding themselves.  The Party of Lincoln is dead and gone. Its slow demise began with the Southern strategy of racially polarized politics in the 1960s to appeal to Southern segregationists, and culminated with the racist demagogue Donald Trump taking advantage of this racially polarized politics for his own self-aggrandizement. What remains is a white Christian Nationalist personality cult Party of Trump, a wannabe totalitarian dictator of a white minority party that rules by force and fear, much like the apartheid white minority governments of South Africa and Rhodesia in the 1970s. How did that turn out in the end?

The GOP old guard needs to come to terms with the death of the Republican Party and start a new political party. They are already five years behind the eight ball due to their delusions of “battling for the soul of the Republican Party.” You failed. Trumpism, the new American fascism, is now a mortal threat to American democracy. The time for mourning the death of your father’s GOP is over, it’s long past time for real action from these Never Trumpers.

They have not even filed a new political party organization with the FEC, or registered a fundraising arm to raise money. They have no party organization to speak of. They have not begun registering voters in the 50 states under this new party organization in order to qualify for the ballot under 50 different state law requirements, or recruiting candidates to run under the new party banner. This hard work can take years. They don’t have years. They are still dithering, wasting valuable time that they do not have, while democracy hangs in the balance.

Never Trumper Jennifer Rubin is at least slightly more clear-eyed than her fellow Never Trumpers. The stampede away from the GOP begins (excerpt):

A MAGA Republican House majority controlled by the disgraced former president would be a threat to the republic. Making a midterm election about the unfitness of the challengers rather than a referendum on the incumbents is a gift to the Democratic Party, which would love nothing more than to make McCarthy the poster boy for toadyism to a despot who tried to steal an election.

But for all her gusto and courage, Cheney might simply be a victim of wishful thinking that there is a Republican Party to be rescued. The chance that non-MAGA Republicans will constitute a majority of the House or Senate Republican membership is virtually nonexistent. The more realistic option — from the point of view of pro-democracy, pro-sanity Americans in the center right — may be to flee the party.

While praising this new GOP old guard group, Rubin has her doubts and has questions:

On Thursday, 150 former governors, members of Congress, Cabinet officials, senior administration officials, strategists and grass-roots leaders issued their own declaration of independence with an explicit threat to leave the party if the GOP does not abandon the MAGA mentality. In a document titled, “A Call to American Renewal,” the signatories reference Cheney’s ouster and write, “This ‘common-sense coalition’ seeks to catalyze the reform of the Republican Party and its recommitment to truth, founding ideals, and decency or, if unsuccessful, lay the foundation for an alternative.” [You have already failed.]

[C]o-founder Miles Taylor, the former Homeland Security official fired under the last president and author of the anonymous op-ed in the New York Times, explained in an interview with MSNBC that this is the “’I’m not crazy’ coalition inside the Republican Party.” He added, “We’re gonna announce a group of Republicans and ex-Republicans that say we want rational, pragmatic governance,” but backed up with the threat to leave the party if the GOP doesn’t get its act together. [You have already failed.]

The group set out a list of principles, emphasizing democracy, constitutional order, truth, ethical government, conservation (“stewardship of America’s resources — natural, environmental and financial”), pluralism (rejecting the notion that America is defined by race, religion or birthplace) and rejection of “all forms of bigotry.”

Some of the stated principles hint at stances on current issues. In declaring they “oppose disenfranchisement of voters,” for example, the signatories position themselves as opponents of the voter suppression laws growing like weeds around the country. Other statements avoid specific positions, such as their support for “policies that further public safety, health, and defense as required for national sovereignty and prosperity.” Noteworthy is the absence of issues such as abortion or gay rights, suggesting the members of the group have agreed to disagree on some topics that are not central to its aim of restoring democracy.

This could be the platform of any GOP presidential nominee before 2016. Principles such as “rule of law” (which Cheney describes as the “most conservative of conservative principles”) were fundamental and uncontroversial within the party until the MAGA era began.

The declaration raises a host of questions:

• • • Will any current elected leaders, besides state leaders, sign on to these principles?
    • When and how do they decide that time’s up for the GOP?
    • Do they run a slate of candidates, either as Republicans or under a yet-to-be-named new party’s banner?
    • Is this an effort to ideologically redefine the GOP as a center-right rather than far-right or nativist party?
    • If the GOP is hopeless, do these dissidents envision the new party akin to the moderate agenda of GOP governors such as Charlie Baker of Massachusetts?

These Republicans have not quite departed from the GOP, although they certainly are hovering around the exit door. While Cheney might seek the election of non-MAGA Republicans, this group surely understands that any GOP House majority would be controlled by the disgraced former president, and hence, a threat to the republic. If Republicans still nominate a MAGA-type presidential candidate in 2024, the dissidents with one foot out the door will need to field a third party or simply back President Biden (as they did in 2020), assuming he is the Democratic nominee. Ultimately, their goal is not restoration of the GOP, but marginalization of the GOP as currently constituted.

Note: Running a spoiler independent or “third party” (a misnomer) candidate for president does absolutely nothing to remediate the Trumpism problem in state legislatures and in Congress. We could wind up with a Democratic president held hostage by a radical Republican Congress, as President Obama was after the so-called Tea Party revolution in 2010.

For now, Cheney and this group of dissident Republicans might embrace a common endeavor: stripping the bark off Kevin McCarthy and his enablers to make sure voters know the danger in handing over the House to MAGA cultists.

In other words, more “huffing and puffing” and not actually doing the hard work of creating a new political party. It’s almost as if Republicans are averse to doing the hard work necessary to save American democracy.