'Never Trump' Republicans went Democrat in 2018. Are they gone for good?

[DonViejo]

Mocked as irrelevant after President Trump's election, voters who leaned Republican in prior races handed Democrats huge wins in suburban districts.

Nov. 25, 2018 / 5:57 AM EST
By Benjy Sarlin

WASHINGTON — Kristin Olsen, who until 2016 led the Republican caucus in California’s state assembly, surveyed the wreckage of the recent midterms in her state and came to a bitter conclusion: "The Grand Old Party is dead," she wrote in an op-ed.

Olsen, 44, told NBC News that Republicans had already struggled to adapt to a changing state, but the “division, hostility, vindictiveness, and lies” coming from President Donald Trump’s White House was a knockout punch.

“It was the straw that broke the camel’s back for many, many, many Republican voters,” she said.

In the Central Valley, where Olsen is a county official, a surge in Latino turnout overwhelmed four-term Congressman Jeff Denham. But the most jarring losses came in suburban Orange County, an iconic GOP enclave where Richard Nixon was born and buried and where anti-tax activists helped lead the Reagan Revolution. Democrats won all four GOP-held seats.

Figures like Olsen, who identified as Republican but opposed Trump in 2016, were often mocked as irrelevant after his victory. Polls showed Republican voters united behind his presidency, despite nagging opposition from retiring GOP politicians and a handful of conservative pundits.

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https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/elections/never-trump-republicans-went-democrat-2018-are-they-gone-good-n938516?cid=public-rss_20181125

[beachbum bob]

1. until the GOP moves away from batshit crazy, many of these republicans will never vote GOP again