Skip to content
“First, the Republican Party has largely become the Party of Trump. Too many Republicans in Congress are willing, in the interest of protecting their jobs, to overlook Trump’s misdeeds (just as too many Democrats were for Clinton during his impeachment). I have no interest in associating myself with that behavior. Maybe someday, the party will return to having honorable leaders like Bush, McCain, and Romney. Until then, count me out.”
— Greg Mankiw, former economic adviser to President George W. Bush, writes that he’s no longer a Republican.
“Yeah, I disagree with what he’s doing now, I wish it wasn’t happening, but I still fully support it.”
— Rep. Mark Green (R-TN), on NPR, talking about President Trump and his pullout of troops from Syria.
“I don’t think there is a voice of moral clarity of any weight in the Republican Party today, and I think that’s just terribly sad… I think it’s just amazing to me that there really isn’t anyone.”
“The Republican party has got to get a grip on itself.”
— Former Secretary of State Colin Powell, on CNN, adding that the country’s foreign policy is “in shambles right now.”
“This is unacceptable. Republicans must condemn it unequivocally. Time is running out for them to get on the right side of history. Our institutions and being diminished in a very dangerous way.”
— Former Rep. Carlos Curbelo (R-FL) demanded that Republicans in Congress “unequivocally” condemn President Trump’s call for Ukraine and China to investigate Joe Biden and his son, The Hill reports.
“You want to know why so few Republicans have held town-hall meetings since early 2017? Because Trump is the cancer they deny is consuming them from the inside out. They see the political grave markers of 42 of their GOP House colleagues—and several hundred down-ballot Republicans—booted from office since 2017 and know that outside of the deepest red enclaves, they’re salesmen for a brand no one is buying. … I have some bad news, Republicans. It never gets better. There is no daylight at the end of this tunnel. Trump is a suicide bomber, and you’ve strapped yourselves to him so tightly that when he explodes, you’re going out to meet the 72 porn stars of the Trumpian afterlife with him. (Spoiler alert: They all look like Ivanka.)”
“It’s like a fire. Fires are a part of the ecosystem, part of the natural progress. And when the forest burns, it’s purified. There can be new growth. For there to be new growth of a conservative movement, of a right center party, the one that I joined in 1988, it needs to burn to the ground.”
— Former GOP strategist Steve Schmidt, talking about the Republican party on MSNBC.
“We’ve gone from being the party of Jeb Bush Republicans who can win everywhere and over perform in Democratic areas to the party of red hat Cletus the Slack-jawed Yokel and QAnon. Who thinks this is going to end well?”
— A Republican political operative, quoted by the Tampa Bay Times.
43%
A Politico/Morning Consult poll finds that 43% of voters believe President Trump represents the majority viewpoint of Republicans in Washington, compared with 37% who said he does not. … That’s a net swing of 20 points from a August poll when 47% said Trump did not represent the viewpoint of most Republicans, and 33% said he did. This is important: Trump promised to “drain the swamp,” but now voters see him as part of the swamp.
“We should be able to elect a box of hammers in this district. If we’re losing here, you can bet there is a Democratic wave coming.”
— Republican strategist Mike Murphy, quoted by the Washington Post, on Tuesday’s Pennsylvania special congressional election.
