Leaving The GOP: A Mass Exodus

Don’t look now, but there’s a mass exodus of Republican voters leaving the GOP.

Politics
It all started back in November with the “Big Lie” from Donald Trump that he won an election he clearly lost. Then came the QAnon crazies and the militia groups and the white supremacists from beneath the GOP woodworks. And then, January 6th happened. It was on that date that tens of thousands of Republicans decided enough was enough and called or logged online to immediately switch their party affiliations.

According to The New York Times, more than 33,000 registered California Republicans left the party during the 3 weeks following the Capitol Hill melee. In Pennsylvania, more than 12,000 voters left the GOP during the past month. In Colorado, roughly 4,700 Republican voters have changed their registration status, while New Hampshire saw about 10,000 leave the party’s voter rolls in just the past month. In Louisiana, 5,500 voters divorced themselves from the GOP, while more than 10,000 Republicans changed their registration in Arizona.

In fact, a January analysis by The Times discovered that nearly 140,000 Republicans have quit the party across 25 states. Even worse, an untold number of top Republican donors have pulled their money and are rapidly drying up GOP coffers. Their reasons? They don’t like the new “perception” of the party, they don’t like the new direction of the party, and they are exhausted by the inexplicable and god-like “he-can-do-no-wrong” affinity for Donald Trump.

Juan Nunez, a 56-year-old Army veteran from Mechanicsburg, PA said one of the things he’s always loved most about America is when the campaign-season fighting ended on Election Day and all sides peacefully accepted the result. Now, that has forever changed.

“What happened in DC that day, it broke my heart,” said Nunez, a lifelong Republican who is now preparing to register as an Independent. “It shook me to the core.”

In Arizona, 10,174 Republicans changed their party affiliation after the state party voted to censure 3 Republicans — Gov. Doug Ducey, former Senator Jeff Flake, and Cindy McCain — for various acts deemed disloyal to Donald Trump.

.
“The Arizona GOP has just lost its mind” and wouldn’t “let go of this fraudulent election stuff,” said 41-year-old Heidi Ushinski of her decision to leave the Arizona Republican Party and register as a Democrat

“I look up to the Jeffry Flakes and the Cindy McCains,” she said. “To see the GOP go after them, specifically, when they speak in ways that I resonate with just shows me that there’s nothing left in the GOP for me to stand for. And it’s really sad.

“The GOP used to stand for what we felt were morals, just character, and integrity,” she continued. “I think that the outspoken GOP coming out of Arizona has lost that.”

That’s not good. However, it’s par for the course for a party that has rapidly become synonymous with white supremacists, anti-Semites, gun-toting militia groups, and conspiracy kooks — all under the leadership of one Donald J. Trump.

Kevin Madden, a lifelong Republican and one-time operative for Mitt Romney, also spoke of the flight of voters leaving the GOP.

“It’s not a birthright and it’s not a religion,” Madden said of party affiliation. “Political parties should be more like your local condo association. If the condo association starts to act in a way that’s inconsistent with your beliefs, you move.”

Michael P. McDonald, a professor of political science at the University of Florida believes voters are leaving the GOP because party leaders have clearly chosen the MAGA minority over the long-standing traditional conservative base.

“Since this is such a highly unusual activity, it probably is indicative of a larger undercurrent that’s happening, where there are other people who are likewise thinking that they no longer feel like they’re part of the Republican Party, but they just haven’t contacted election officials to tell them that they might change their party registration,” McDonald said. “So this is probably a tip of an iceberg.”

Mayor Michael Taylor of Sterling Heights, MI, a lifelong Republican who already had one foot out of the party before the 2020 elections, admitted he couldn’t bring himself to vote for Trump last November even after backing him in 2016 (he voted for Joe Biden). According to Taylor, the relentless promotion of conspiracy theories by Trump and GOP leaders as well as the attack at the Capitol is what pushed him all the way out of the party.

“There was enough before the election to swear off the GOP, but the incredible events since have made it clear to me that I don’t fit into this party,” Taylor said. “It wasn’t just complaining about election fraud anymore. They have taken control of the Capitol at the behest of the president of the United States. And if there was a clear break with the party in my mind, that was it.”

OK WASSUP! discusses Politics:
Voters are leaving the GOP.