First, I think I that before readers jump to unwarranted conclusions I need to define the term “Decent Republicans”.  By this I am not referring to the Republicans cowards in Congress who may privately dislike Trump’s deplorable rhetoric and actions but jump to his support for political gain and to protect their standing with Trump’s supporters back home.  There is more than ample evidence that Trump has highjacked both the Republican Party and its Congressional leadership.

Here “decent Republicans” refers in part to prominent former Republicans who recently left their party after deciding it had departed drastically from the tenants they have believed in all of their lives. These people include veteran strategist Steve Schmidt who ran John McCain’s 2008 presidential campaign. prominent columnist George Will, former senator Gordon Humphrey, former representative and TV host Joe Scarborough, and Captain Sully Sullenberger who became famous after saving the lives of 155 passengers and crew by landing his plane on the Hudson River.

They were not alone.  The list of other less well known individuals who left the GOP because it has come under the despotic influence of Trump includes former Reagan and Bush aide Peter Wehner, leaders of the Republican Majority for Choice organization Susan Bevan and Susan Cullman, former congressional spokesman and Republican rising star Kurt Bardella, and L Brands CEO Leslie Wexner (the wealthiest supporter of the GOP in Ohio) as well as professor at the U.S. Naval War College Tom Nichols and Michael London, a former member of the Trumbull Town Council in Connecticut.

London announced he was leaving the GOP because it is “no longer the party that I believed in all these years.” Steve stated Schmidt he left because Trump “wants to transform the GOP into a European-style nationalist party, and believes in deportation of undocumented immigrants, white identity politics, protectionism and isolationism backed by hyper-macho threats to bomb the living daylights out of anyone who messes with us.” Bardella left saying the GOP had lost touch with meat-and-potato issues and “panders to a lunatic fringe that subscribes to an ideology of hate and fear.” Sully Sullenberger said, “This is not the America I know” and went on to compare the Trump era to the darkest period in his life time at height of the Vietnam War and the assignations of John and Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King.

Now don’t get me wrong, these are not necessarily our allies. Most are not going to change their stripes and become Democrats. For the most part they, as well those who feel the same way but have maintained their Republican Party affiliations, are the type of establishment Republicans who have opposed the core values of the Democratic party for years.  However, they know that unless Trump and his best Republican allies absorb major defeats in the 2018 mid-terms and 2020 presidential election cycle, the highjacked Republican party will remain in the hands of Trump-like politicians for years to come even after Trump has departed from the political landscape. They also know that if that happens the GOP will become a permanent minority party.

So, like CNN commentators Ana Navarro – a political strategist who served in several Republican administrations, and Tara Setmayer – a former Republican Communications Director on Capitol Hill, all of these former Republicans cannot in good conscious continue to vote for Republicans who continue to toe the Trump line.  So they will vote for Democratic candidates in state and federal races tomorrow and probably again in 2020.  They see that as the only chance they have of returning sanity to the Republican Party and causing it to revert to the traditional principles they believe in.

Cajun    11/5/2018