Daily Kos A party purge: 40% of Republican lawmakers have left Congress since Trump's inauguration

[Botany]

A true party purge: 40% of Republican lawmakers have left Congress since Trump's inauguration

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2019/9/24/1887397/-A-true-party-purge-40-of-Republican-lawmakers-have-left-Congress-since-Trump-s-inauguration?detail=emaildksp


Since Trump was inaugurated, reports the Post, "[N]early 40 percent of the 241 Republicans who were in office in January 2017 are gone or leaving because of election losses, retirements including former House speaker Paul D. Ryan (Wis.), and some, such as Mitchell, who are simply quitting in disgust."

It's not just that Trump has ushered in a new era of Republicanism: He's ushered in a whole new Republican Party. And what the Post doesn't say but we can is that almost all of the Republicans who have entered office since Trump took over are, by definition, party members who are more willing to defend and help cover up Trump's behavior than the Republicans who "retired" or "quit in disgust."

We really are seeing a national party decay before our eyes, a party in which anyone with a modicum of seriousness is pushed out, willingly or not, and replaced by people with an even stronger commitment to obsessive Dear Leaderism. The hangers-on, like Ben Sasse, can barely pretend at the supposed resistance they pretended at before.

But this was the intention, and nobody can say they didn't see it coming. Adherence to the party line, even if it resulted in nonsensical arguments and the dumping of even the most longstanding prior ideologies, is the Fox News model of Republicanism. House Republicans seized on conspiracy theorizing as a unifying motivator for the base; House hearing rooms were soon filled with claims and theories lifted from chain letters and dodgy websites. Rules were rewritten as needed, from judicial nominations to Supreme Court appointments and deficits were bad, then good, then bad, then good, then ignored. The same Republican voices that were once railing against presidential abuses of power appeared on the same programs to agree with the same hosts that Actually, presidents have such expansive powers as to render them exempt from oversight entirely.

[SWBTATTReg]

1. Disgusting. If any repug ever throws out the saying that 'Country First' to me, I'll throw up ...

on them.

Perhaps it's time to expand the democratic party and sign up these people who are leaving the repug party. After all, they claim to be sick of all of the democrats and the democratic party (this claim is BS too), when in fact they are leaving their own party.

The more folks that have been down the Alice in Wonderland road could be an asset (long term one) that would enable the newly expanded democratic party to hold on future gains.

To those leaving the GOP...which is it? Democrats are horrible or the GOP you just left isn't there anymore and perhaps the democratic party / democrats hold more in common w/ you than you like to admit, after all, democrats are Country First.

[Hermit-The-Prog]

2. it's the party of assault, hypocrisy, and insanity

It's group-think carried to its destructive extreme.

[Thekaspervote]

3. Unfortunately for us, when the dotard is gone they will run again...it's an on going battle that

May take generations to blot out, and that’s only if we don’t drop the ball

[Wounded Bear]

4. It's been years in the making...

it's just moving a bit faster lately, as it circles the drain.

[Generic Other]

5. I'm waiting for them to reach the 100% mark

Come on GOP. YOu can do it!