"If you want leaders who will enable and spread his destructive lies, I’m not your person, you have plenty of others to choose from," said Liz Cheney this morning to her colleagues in the closed door session that kicked her out of party leadership. "That will be their legacy." Immediately afterwards she told a gaggle of reporters that she will do everything she can to prevent Trump from returning to presidency.
Many of the GOP chickenshit cultists didn't want to go on record in the vote to cancel Liz Cheney this morning... so McCarthy mandated a voice vote. Now no one will ever be held individually responsible... other than the ones boasting about defeating her, like dysfunctional sociopaths Marjorie Taylor Greene, Matt Gaetz and Mad Cawthorn.
After the Republicans took their secret vote, Mondaire Jones issued a statement saying that "The civil war within the Republican Party is complete. In voting to remove Liz Cheney from their leadership, House Republicans have taken the unprecedented step of silencing and disavowing one of the few members of their party with the basic moral courage to call out the Big Lie and publicly admit that the 2020 election was safe, fair, and legitimate. There can no longer be any doubt that the GOP is the party of Donald Trump, white nationalism, and QAnon conspiracy theorists-- a party of sycophants subversive to the rule of law and hostile to democracy itself. The only way to stop their assault on our democracy is to defeat them."
We've heard it before, of course, but last night the NY Times reported that some Republican Party elites are grumbling about starting a third party. They probably won't-- and if they do, who would care? The overwhelming majority of Republican voters still feel the same way about Trump-- or more so-- when he made his comment about shooting someone in the middle of 5th Avenue and not losing a single supporter. According to the latest Morning Consult tracking poll, 81% of registered Republican voters say they have a positive view of Trump, and just 17% say their view of him is negative. And among people who voted for Trump in November, just 12% have a negative opinion of him today.
Back to that Times report, Zach Montague wrote that "More than 100 Republicans, including some former elected officials, are preparing to release a letter this week threatening to form a third party if the Republican Party does not make certain changes, according to an organizer of the effort." Threatening, are they? Again. "When in our democratic republic, forces of conspiracy, division, and despotism arise, it is the patriotic duty of citizens to act collectively in defense of liberty and justice." Yeah... they've been moaning about this for how long now?
“This is a first step,” said Miles Taylor, an organizer of the effort and a former Trump-era Department of Homeland Security official who anonymously wrote a book condemning the Trump administration. In October, Mr. Taylor acknowledged he was the author of both the book and a 2018 New York Times Op-Ed article.
“This is us saying that a group of more than 100 prominent Republicans think that the situation has gotten so dire with the Republican Party that it is now time to seriously consider whether an alternative might be the only option,” he said.
The list of people signing the statement includes former officials at both the state and national level who once were governors, members of Congress, ambassadors, cabinet secretaries, state legislators and Republican Party chairmen, Mr. Taylor said.
Mr. Taylor declined to name the signers. Reuters reported earlier that the former governors Tom Ridge of Pennsylvania and Christine Todd Whitman of New Jersey will sign it, as will former Transportation Secretary Mary Peters and former Representatives Charlie Dent of Pennsylvania, Barbara Comstock of Virginia, Reid Ribble of Wisconsin and Mickey Edwards of Oklahoma.
Mr. Taylor declined on Tuesday to reveal the specific changes that the coalition was planning to demand of the Republican Party in its statement.
“I’m still a Republican, but I’m hanging on by the skin of my teeth because how quickly the party has divorced itself from truth and reason,” Mr. Taylor said. “I’m one of those in the group that feels very strongly that if we can’t get the G.OP. back to a rational party that supports free minds, free markets, and free people, I’m out and a lot of people are coming with me.”
This mouse is roarin'! How is anyone with a jot of sense still identifying as a Republican? And one of the big and likely insurmountable problems here is that Christine Todd Whitman, Mary Peters, Charlie Dent, Barbara Comstock, Reid Ribble and Mickey Edwards are no longer prominent Republicans in anyone's eyes but NY Times and Washington Post columnists and MSNBC hosts. You want to know who prominent Republicans are today? Look no further than people named Trump and lackeys like Matt Gaetz, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Lauren Boebert, Mad Cawthorn, Ted Cruz, Paul Gosar, Mo Brooks and Louie Gohmert... and the 1/6 insurrectionists who rampaged through the Capitol trying to find and kill Nancy Pelosi and Mike Pence.