Some Republicans who served in former President George W. Bush’s administration are leaving the Republican Party over the GOP’s failure to denounce Donald Trump especially after the riot at the nation’s Capitol on Jan. 6.
These officials believe that they no longer have a place in the Republican Party and many of them have either ended their membership, let it lapse or change their party affiliation to independent.
Undersecretary of the Treasury for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence in the Bush administration, Jimmy Gurulé, told Reuters, “the Republican Party as I knew it no longer exists. I’d call it the cult of Trump.”
Kristopher Purcell, who worked in the Bush White House’s communications office for six years, said roughly 60 to 70 former Bush officials have decided to leave the party and that number is growing everyday.
“If it continues to be the party of Trump, many of us are not going back. Unless the Senate convicts him, and rids themselves of the Trump cancer, many of us will not be going back to vote for Republican leaders,” Rosario Marin, a former Treasurer of the U.S. under Bush said.
Reuters note that the Republican Party is currently caught between disaffected moderate Republicans and independents disgusted by the hold Trump still has over elected officials, and Trump’s fervently loyal base. Without the enthusiastic support of both groups, the party will struggle to win national elections, according to polling, Republican officials and strategists.
