To my former House GOP colleagues,
This past week has probably not been very fun for you. The American people sent a clear message about the corruption, incompetence, and cruelty of the modern GOP. You’re probably ashamed, angry, and looking for someone to blame.
Today, you’ll vote on who will lead House Republicans for the next two years. Your choices are Steve Scalise and Jim Jordan, two of the President’s most loyal defenders, both of whom voted to object to certifying the 2020 election.
A week after voters rejected Donald Trump in overwhelming fashion, you’re about to take the first step toward cementing his control of the party. Again.
You’ve Been Here Before
You remember 2021 as well as I do. For a couple of weeks after January 6th, a lot of you were done with Trump. Members who’d defended him for four years were stopping me in the hallway to say it was finally over.
That lasted right up until the impeachment vote. By then most of you had decided he was finished anyway, so why take the heat? Fifteen days later, Kevin McCarthy was posing for a picture with him at Mar-a-Lago and gave permission to the party to welcome Trump back with open arms. And the ten of us who voted to impeach quickly became the problem instead of him.
Pushing him out back then would have given you four years to rally behind new leaders and new ideas. Instead, you waited for him to go away. He didn’t. He came back stronger, and he took the party with him. Please don’t make the same bet twice.
You told yourselves in 2021 that voters would never forgive you for crossing him. But last week, voters took that excuse away from you.
This wasn’t a normal midterm loss. Democrats flipped Senate seats in Ohio, Iowa, North Carolina, South Carolina, Kansas, and Texas. Greg Abbott, who had won every one of his previous races for governor by double digits, lost Texas by seven points. Ken Paxton lost by about twelve. It was the worst midterm defeat either party has suffered in half a century.
And yet listen to how people are explaining it. Scalise told you last week that “we were unable to defy history,” as if this were the normal swing of the pendulum. Vice President Vance says it was the Iran war, and only the war. The President says it happened because he wasn’t on the ballot. Others will blame weak candidates, or bad turnout operations, or the media.
But voters didn’t reject one decision or one candidate. They rejected the whole package.
Here’s what I’d urge you to be honest about. The country didn’t turn liberal overnight. Voters in Texas didn’t suddenly stop believing in low taxes and a secure border. Voters in Kansas didn’t wake up on Tuesday wanting to be California. Those voters rejected something else.
They rejected a war they were told would take weeks and that drove up the price of everything they buy. They rejected pardons for donors, stock trades in companies the administration regulates, and a gold ballroom built while families struggled to fill their gas tanks.
They rejected a party that defends every cruelty its leader commits and calls anyone who objects a traitor or a whiner. They rejected the idea that loyalty to one man is the only qualification that matters.
To his credit, Scalise also wrote that Republicans “will need to be honest with ourselves about what happened.” He’s right about that.
But the honest version is simple. Voters understood exactly what the GOP has become, and they walked away from it. In historic fashion.
The Party You Could Build
Here’s the good news: there is a real Republican Party waiting to be rebuilt, and, believe it or not, millions of left-of-center Americans are desperate for you to build it. They know this country can’t survive if one party exists at the whim of a deranged authoritarian.
Imagine a party that takes the debt seriously again, instead of passing tax bills that pile trillions onto it. A party with real conservative answers on the things families are actually worried about: building more housing so young people can afford a home, producing more American energy so gas prices come down, and making health care cheaper instead of just complaining about it.
A party that stands with our allies and against dictators, the way Ronald Reagan did, instead of cozying up to Putin and leaving Ukraine to fend for itself.
Sounds great, doesn’t it? But, as always, there’s a catch.
Nobody is going to build that party for you. And rebuilding starts with the leaders you choose. That means picking someone who doesn’t treat last Tuesday like it was just a bad night. Someone with a plan for the next two years that isn’t just defending the President. Someone who wants this party to end up somewhere it hasn’t been. Neither of the two men asking for your vote fits that, and you know it.
The President knows it too, because he’s staying out of the leadership race. When has he ever stayed out of anything? He’s not staying out because he wants to respect the process. He’s staying out because he already knows what he gets either way. Another leader who’ll defend him no matter what.
Last Tuesday, millions of your voters stood in a booth alone and did the thing you’ve been afraid to do for years. Now it’s your turn to refuse the two-man race you’ve been handed and choose someone who will take the party in a different direction.
You can stay quiet and go down with Trump, or you can start saying in public what you’ve been saying to each other in private.
I walked away from Trump’s madness in 2021. It cost me my party and my career in Congress, and I’d do it again in a heartbeat. Most people in politics never get a second chance at a decision like that. You’re getting one.
You balked once. Don’t miss this one.
- Adam
This is wisdom, GOP folks, listen to it!
So they chose between sleazy Scalise & mad dog Jordan? Have they learned nothing from these elections?? I guess not.