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The Establishments war on Donald Trump Title: ‘The Party of Trump Must Be Obliterated. Annihilated. Destroyed’ WASHINGTON – Steve Schmidt has worked at the highest levels of Republican politics. He helped run George W. Bush’s 2004 presidential campaign and oversaw the confirmations of Supreme Court Justices John Roberts and Samuel Alito. He led Sen. John McCain’s ’08 presidential bid and helped introduce Sarah Palin to the world. The American Association of Political Consultants once named him its “GOP Campaign Manager of the Year.” But today, Schmidt is finished with the Republican Party. He renounced his membership last week in a series of withering tweets that quickly went viral. Under Trump, he wrote, the party had become “corrupt, indecent, and immoral.” With the exception of a select few, the GOP was “filled with feckless cowards who disgrace and dishonor the legacies of the party’s greatest leaders.” He pointed to the Trump administration’s family separation policy and use of detention centers for young immigrant children – “internment camps for babies” – and the refusal of House Speaker Paul Ryan and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell to repudiate the president. 29 years and nine months ago I registered to vote and became a member of The Republican Party which was founded in 1854 to oppose slavery and stand for the dignity of human life. Today I renounce my membership in the Republican Party. It is fully the party of Trump. — Steve Schmidt (@SteveSchmidtSES) June 20, 2018 In the days since, Schmidt’s former party brethren appear to have confirmed his prognosis. First, former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee tweeted an image of five heavily tattooed Hispanic-looking men – ostensibly gang members – with the message: “Nancy Pelosi introduces her campaign committee for the take back of the House.” Huckabee’s tweet was roundly criticized as bigoted and xenophobic. (He stiff-armed these accusations.) On Sunday, David Bossie, a veteran conservative activist who was Trump’s deputy campaign manager in 2016, told a black panelist on Fox News that he was “out of his cotton-picking mind.” (Bossie later apologized.) These weren’t the dog whistles of yore; this was plain-as-day bigotry and racism. Schmidt’s decision to cut ties with Republicans didn’t exactly come as a surprise. He has for years served as one of the GOP’s staunchest critics from within. (You’ve probably seen him on MSNBC as the network’s go-to talking head for diagnosing the ills of the modern Republican Party.) Still, his perspective is a unique one, the star consultant who swore off his party and sounded the alarm on his way out. I spoke with Schmidt on Monday afternoon. Why did you finally decide to leave the Republican Party? When Trump was elected, there were three parties in Washington: the Trump party, the Democratic Party and the Republican Party. The Republican Party had every chance to put a check on his vile personal conduct, his administration’s outlandish corruption, his fetishizing and affinity for autocrats around the world and his undermining of the western alliance. How did it get to this point? The Republican Party remained the party of the North and the West culturally in this country until the Civil Rights Act. On the day that LBJ signs the Civil Rights Act, he says, “I feel like I’ve lost the South.” Over time, beginning with Richard Nixon in ’68, with the Southern Strategy and the appeal to white working-class Southerners, the Republican Party is uprooted from the North and the West. That is the party I was born into. This present strain of know-nothingism has long been in the party’s DNA. So the party’s evolution is as much cultural as it is political or ideological. What you’ve seen is this rapid devolution over the last 18 months of the Republican Party becoming a white ethno-nationalist party, a blood-and-soil party that is protectionist, isolationist, that is rooted in resentment and grievance. The Republican Party isn’t going to die because of Trump. It’s going to die because of Ryan and McConnell. You’re now left with one political party in support of liberal democracy. Would these same forces have reared their heads if we’d had a Marco Rubio or a Hillary Clinton presidency? President Obama said he draws a straight line from McCain’s choice of Sarah Palin as his running mate to Trump’s election. You helped McCain pick Palin in 2008. Did she usher in the Trump era? Can the Republican Party be saved? I don’t view it so much differently than I view a forest fire. A forest fire is part of a natural cycle of the forest. The forest burns, and through its burning and destruction, it is regenerated and made healthy again. For the Republican Party and the conservative movement, with its rot, its corruption, its indecency … before there can be any talk of restoration, there must be a season of burning.
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#7. To: Willie Green (#0)
Good luck getting on the liberal talk shows now. Quitting the Republican Party makes you just another liberal. The talk shows want RINOs -- they think it makes their biased reporting appear balanced. ("Even Republicans agree with us!")
#9. To: misterwhite (#7)
EXACTLY. And they LOVE the fake "Republicans" who defected because of the "mean, heartless" Trump. It took MSNBC all of 2 seconds to hire Steve Schmidt co-saboteur Nicole Wallace to host one of their loony Leftist Propaganda programs.
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