Veteran GOP Strategist Quits GOP Over Trump and "Cowardly" Republicans

It seems that as Donald Trump and his racist followers double down, more thinking Republicans are abandoning the GOP which has become something ugly and hideous and filled with spineless wonders who prostitute themselves to any lengths to avoid a primary contest against challengers who not that many years ago would not even have been allowed on a county or city committee much less be allowed to be a candidate backed by the GOP.  Once Trump claimed the GOP nomination in 2016 it became clear that the GOP no longer has any standards unless those standards are comprised of narcissism, perpetual lying, rank racism, and objective fact free delusions.  The latest exodus from the GOP involves long time GOP strategist and former George W. Bush White House staffer and John McCain campaign staffer Steven Schmidt.   Schmidt even went to state that in its current form, the Republican Party is a threat to American democracy.  Huffington Post looks at Schmidt's exodus from the GOP:

Veteran GOP strategist Steve Schmidt renounced his Republican Party membership on Wednesday and pledged to vote for Democrats in an effort to preserve “what is right and decent” in the United States.

In a series of scathing tweets, Schmidt blasted the GOP as “corrupt, indecent and immoral” and “fully the party of Trump.”

“It is filled with feckless cowards who disgrace and dishonor the legacies of the party’s greatest leaders,” tweeted Schmidt, an MSNBC political analyst who has been an outspoken critic of President Donald Trump. “Today the GOP has become a danger to our democracy and our values.”

Schmidt, who served as an adviser in the George W. Bush White House, strongly condemned the Trump administration’s policy of separating families caught illegally crossing the border into the U.S.

“This child separation policy is connected to the worst abuses of humanity in our history,” he tweeted. “It is connected by the same evil that separated families during slavery and dislocated tribes and broke up Native American families. It is immoral and must be repudiated.”

Schmidt, who said in July that Trump had the “impulse control of a little child,” joins a growing chorus of political pundits and lawmakers to rebuke the administration’s practice of separating children from parents facing prosecution for illegally crossing the border.
 

Schmidt also lashed out at Republicans who either are apologists and or his enablers saying "With the exception of a few Governors like Baker, Hogan and Kasich it is filled with feckless cowards who disgrace and dishonor the legacies of the party’s greatest leaders."  Another former Republican taking aim at Trump enablers within the GOP is columnist Jennifer Rubin. In a column in the Washington Post, she lambasted Paul Ryan and others:

This is moral madness, a betrayal of universal human values that marks the lowest point in the Trump presidency — or any presidency since the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II.

There is no point, ever, at which Fox News executives stop raking in money and sending their hosts out to pander to ignorant anti-immigrant audiences. (A patch of Fox TV and film talent is up in arms, some threatening to leave for another studio.) There is never a time when House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) says, “You know, my church and my conscience don’t allow me to participate in such evil,” or when anyone in the White House has the decency to quit rather than lie and help perpetuate the policy.

There surely is never a moment [Trump] the president stops lying, . . . . He is, unbelievably, getting worse, and there is no one in the administration willing to resist.

There are plenty of signs that the public has finally had enough of Trump’s lying and the GOP’s inhumanity. A massive protest is planned for June 30 near the White House and in 132 cities across the country. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce issued a blistering attack on Trump’s policies.  At least eight governors(including two Republicans) are now recalling National Guard troops assigned to help with the border crackdown.

There is far more that can be done — from voters calling and showing up at lawmakers’ offices and appearances, to cutting off donations flowing to GOP candidates and PACs.

[T]he Republican Party has disgraced itself and lost the moral authority to govern. Anyone and everyone with an “R” after his or her name who did not condemn the policy and take meaningful action to eliminate it will be attacked for this disgraceful chapter. Really, should they be reelected for anything — ever?

This from a former Republican.  Schmidt and Rubin have belatedly reached a point I reached many years ago. Yes, Trump is an outright evil, but I remain insistent that the evil began to overtake the GOP with the rise of the evangelical Christians - the most selfish, hate-filled, cruel people one can encounter - began their takeover of the GOP base. Moderate Republicans of old and the so-called country club Republicans never countenanced such evil.  That began with with Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson and has now metastasized in the form of Robert Jeffress, Franklin Graham and Jerry Falwell, Jr., and, of course Trump, who made a pact with the devil with them.