Conservative columnist George Will has told a group of conservatives that he has quit the Republican Party because with Donald Trump “It is no longer my party.” He’s the first major defection from the high visibility Republican media or political elite. (GOP strategist Mary Matalin has registered with the Libertarian Party, but says she is a “provisional Trumpster.”) But he now joins a growing parade of GOPers who say they’ll either for for Democratic presumptive Presidential nominee Hillary Clinton or not vote at all. Talking Points Memo reports:
Longtime columnist George Will has officially left the Republican Party, he told a group of conservatives on Friday.
Will, a conservative writer for the Washington Post, confirmed to PJ Media that he switched his Maryland party registration from GOP to unaffiliated.
At a meeting of the Federalist Society Friday in D.C., Will told the group it’s worth refusing to back Trump even if it hands the election to Democrat Hillary Clinton.
“This is not my party,” he told the group. “Make sure he loses. Grit their teeth for four years and win the White House.”
According to the report, one of the new developments in deciding to leave the longtime party of his choice is when House Speaker Paul Ryan chose to endorse Trump.
Will is hardly alone in his consternation that all of what is now encapsulated by the newly rebranded name “Trump” entails. A larger number of GOPers have started coming out against Trump, saying they won’t vote for him, or they’ll vote for Hillary Clinton, and some won’t work with him.
Henry Paulson. chairman of the Paulson Institute and a former U.S. treasury secretary and chief executive of Goldman Sachs, announced that said for the good of the country, Republicans need to choose party over country and not vote for GOP presumptive nominee Donald Trump. He says he’s going to vote for Clinton and that among Republicans “he is not alone.”
He is now one of several high profile former members of Republican administrations who are coming out squarely against Trump. The late first lady Nancy Reagan was known to have not only not liked Trump, but been upset over Trump comparing himself to the late President Ronald Reagan — whose kids have epeatedly said their father would never ever have voted for (an anti-Trump op-ed written by some Reagan aides as reportedly written at the request of Nancy Reagan). One of the more ludicrous political responses have been Trumpistas who replied that Reagan’s kids would have no idea how their father would have voted. Brent Scowcroft, National Security Adviser to Presidents George H. W. Bush and Gerald Ford, and who worked in the White Houses of Presidents Richard Nixon and George W. Bush recently endorsed Clinton, saying she “brings truly unique experience and perspective to the White House.” And several GOP business leaders are coming out for Clinton.
Meanwhile, many top GOP strategists are refusing to work for Trump.
Paulson became Treasury Secretary in 2006 and had to deal with the great recession two years later. Here’s some of what he wrote in op-ed in The Washington Post:
Republicans stand at a crossroads. With Donald Trump as the presumptive presidential nominee, we are witnessing a populist hijacking of one of the United States’ great political parties. The GOP, in putting Trump at the top of the ticket, is endorsing a brand of populism rooted in ignorance, prejudice, fear and isolationism. This troubles me deeply as a Republican, but it troubles me even more as an American. Enough is enough. It’s time to put country before party and say it together: Never Trump.
…Let’s start by talking about his business acumen. When Trump assures us he’ll do for the United States what he’s done for his businesses, that’s not a promise — it’s a threat…
…I’m not the first Republican to say Trump is a phony and should not be president, and I expect there will be many more to come. But as a former chief executive and treasury secretary, I hope to bring an additional perspective to the discussion….
A few more excerpts:
He excels at scorched-earth tactics in negotiations during bankruptcy proceedings. Here, the “Art of the Deal” businessman is a master at advantaging himself over his fellow stakeholders and partners. In essence, he takes imprudent risks and, when his businesses fail, disavows his debts. He has branded himself as a business genius by flaunting and exaggerating his wealth. He is adept at leveraging his brand through licensing agreements that enable him to slap his name on anything he can. But while marketing and self-promotion may translate on the campaign trail, they have little relevance in running our country. And although his business dealings have allowed him to increase his inherited wealth, none of us knows by how much — we have only his word for it.’
And:
Now let’s talk about Trump the prospective president. Are we to believe that Trump, with his intensely divisive rhetoric and behavior, could bridge our country’s partisan divide? The American people are disgusted with business as usual in Washington, and it’s not hard to understand why. They feel as though they are being left behind or are afraid that they will be. They aren’t getting honest answers, and they believe that the most important problems are not being solved. This is not the fault of one political party; it’s the fault of too many partisans and ideologues on both sides who are unwilling or unable to work together.
I can’t help but wonder what would have happened if a divisive character such as Trump were president during the 2008 financial crisis, at a time when leadership, compromise and careful analysis were critical.
He makes an argument in favor of some approaches to fix some problems (all would requiring a thoughtful and cooperative President) then concludes:
Simply put, a Trump presidency is unthinkable.
As a Republican looking ahead to November, there are many strong conservative leaders in statehouses across the United States and in Congress, whose candidacies I am actively supporting. They have a big job to do to reinvent and revitalize the Republican Party. They can do so by responding to the fears and frustrations of the American people and uniting them behind some common aspirations, while staying constant to the principles that have made our country great.
When it comes to the presidency, I will not vote for Donald Trump. I will not cast a write-in vote. I’ll be voting for Hillary Clinton, with the hope that she can bring Americans together to do the things necessary to strengthen our economy, our environment and our place in the world. To my Republican friends: I know I’m not alone.
Huffington Post editor Arianna Huffington puts this tag under each each post that mentions Trump:
Editor’s note: Donald Trump regularly incites political violence and is a serial liar, rampant xenophobe, racist, misogynist and birther who has repeatedly pledged to ban all Muslims — 1.6 billion members of an entire religion — from entering the U.S.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.