Steve Schmidt used to be a Republican insider. He ran Republican campaigns. He drew a line at Trump. He saw Trump for the phony and self-obsessed con man that he is. He joined the Lincoln Project. He changed his party registration. He is no longer a Republican.
He says that January 6 marks the beginning of the end for the GOP. Here is an excerpt from his remarks.
The die is cast for the Republican Party. It will be destroyed on January 6th in much the same way the Whig party was destroyed by the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act in 1854. The act unraveled the Missouri compromise and allowed for the westward expansion of slavery.
The party could not survive its factionalism. There could be no more accommodation, compromise, and partnership between pro-slavery and anti-slavery Whigs. A new political party was born, the Republican Party. Now, that party will divide into irreconcilable factions on January 6th.
The 6th will commence a political civil war inside the GOP. The autocratic side will roll over the pro-democracy remnant of the GOP like the Wehrmacht did the Belgian Army in 1940. The ‘22 GOP primary season will be a blood letting. The 6th will be a loyalty test. The purge will follow.
Does anybody doubt the outcome of the @IvankaTrump vs. @marcorubio primary in Florida? Anyone willing to make a bet on @robportman?
It turns out JFK was right. The problem of trying to ride the tiger is the likelihood of winding up inside the tiger.
The poisonous fruit from four years of collaboration and complicity with Trump’s insanity, illiberalism, and incompetence are ready for harvest. It will kill the GOP because its Pro-Democracy faction and Autocratic factions can no more exist together then could the Whig Party hold together the Abolitionist with the Slave master. It won’t happen over night, but the destination is clear.
The Conservative party in America is dead. It may continue to bear the name “Republican” but it will be no such thing. Fascism has indeed come to America, and as was once predicted it is wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Sorry, I’ve heard about the beginning of the end of the Republican Party for almost 30 years now. As much as I’d like to, not buying it. Like all reactionary movements in history, the most that might happen is a change of name, like the rebranding of Whigs to Republicans. Honest Abe was, remember, a Whig congressman.
Greg,
Not even the GOP has seen the likes of Trump. Egotist, bully, narcissist, charismatic like Hitler, vain, a bully. A certain portion of the Republicans in Congress are ready to abandon the Constitution to placate him.
He’s still a Republican insider. The enemy of your enemy is not your friend.
I think so, too. He made a bundle from he “Game Changer” film, and his rebrand has been a success. But I will always remember that Steve Schmidt gave us Sarah Palin.
And what happened to Sarah Palin’s political carrier after Schmidt discovered her in Alaska with its less than 3/4 of a million population and elevated her to the national level putting her under a microscope for hundreds of millions of Americans?
Her joke of a life in Alaska that few knew about became a joke that almost everyone knew about, ending her political career.
In 2006, she became the youngest person and the first woman to be elected Governor of Alaska. Her husband Todd filed for divorce from Sarah on August 29, 2019, citing “incompatibility of temperament”. The divorce was finalized on March 23, 2020.
How often do we hear about her now?
Palin was a horrible choice. A very stupid woman.
Schmidt’s worst mistake.
Doomed McCain’s candidacy.
That said,I’m still interested in what Steve Schmidt has to say.
I think his views are worth reading.
I don’t understand the ideological purists who excoriate people because they were wrong in the past.
I was wrong in the past.
Should I never be allowed to speak or be heard again?
Some people probably think so.
Why not allow people to learn and change?
I, of all people, believe in redemption.
Yes, I’m assuming that everyone here is learning something new each and every day, thank goodness. I would hate to think that we are all doomed to be judged by our actions twenty or thirty years ago. I know I knew almost nothing in my twenties, and my thirties were not a whole lot better. Sometimes it feels like my whole life has been learning from a series of mistakes. The more I learn the more I know the less I know.
I hope Steve is correct
I am a lot more interested in saving public education than the Republican Party. You reap what you sow. Republicans operate under the delusion that the party is fiscally conservative. Every time in office, they blow up the deficit. At this point, they have lost their principles and way, but they still have lots of voters. I do like to listen to Schmidt as he has gift for language. He knows how to ‘tell it like it is.’
Boy, I sure hope so. If they ever have control of all three branches of the federal government again we won’t have elections anymore. They’ll simply declare the winner no matter the result.
Just appalling behavior and it’s completely accepted. They’re now messing around with vote totals in states they don’t even represent or live in- we now have Texas Republicans throwing out millions of Pennsylvania and Georgia votes.
The Missouri Senator apparently feels he has the right to disenfranchise 20 million people in 5 states. Completely out of control and power crazed.
I mean, honestly. How dare they attack the voters in these states and call them all fraudulent? Have they forgotten who pays their salaries?
I do find it amusing, however, how absolutely DESPERATE the Trump family are to remain in power.
We were all told they had such fabulous business careers yet they’re all clinging to these jobs as if they’ll never get another. I suppose they know no respectable employer would have any of them, even for free.
Good riddance. They can go rob their investors instead of the public.
Trump owes Deutsche Bank a lot of money. According to the son of a bank executive, the loans are back by Russia. https://frontpagelive.com/2020/01/03/son-of-deutsche-bank-exec-says-trumps-massive-loans-were-backed-by-russia/
As ignorant as I feel I am about financial information, somehow I felt this before 2016. I also feel pretty certain his debt must be larger than his assets. If his loans are called in, he has bigger problems than coming up with money.
His debt isn’t larger than his assets are, but here’s the problem: In order to meet the loan payments, he will have to sell off those among his properties that are making money, for many of them aren’t. So, he will be left with the ones that are losing money year after year. A financial death spiral. And who’s going to lend to this guy now? He can no longer cover his incompetence with gifts from his father and strong-arming of bankers by Putin and his cronies.
But that’s the least of his problems. He faces hundreds of civil suits and criminal cases for a long, long list of crimes, and once these start being filed, it will be an avalanche. The dress with his DNA on it from the department store incident? Just one of many.
Others will feel emboldened to come forward. He knows this. And then there are all the financial crimes. Thus the desperateness.
But that doesn’t account, entirely, for the last few months. His mental disorder and his utter ignorance of how almost anything works do. Mate Weirdl posted, here, a podcast by Bannon from quite a while ago in which Bannon called this a war and outlined these harebrained schemes that Trump has followed: trying to get states to appoint different, pro-Trump electors; challenging the mail-in ballots in federal court; getting “his” Supremes to overturn the election; getting the Vice President, in his role as president of the Senate, to throw out the electors instead of certifying them. As you may know, Trump as politician rather than as real-estate (and other business) con man was the creation of Bannon, Sessions, and Miller who went looking for someone to carry their white supremacist agenda forward. The story of that is extremely well told in the Frontline documentary “Zero Tolerance,” which can be viewed for free online. And of course, here we are. Trump is doing what he has always done, trying to rant and bully and bring lawsuits in a desperate attempt to hang onto power and keep himself and his spawn out of prison.
He will doubtless flee the country and try to set up a Trump Network and to play the President in Exile. But there’s a historical lesson he doesn’t know (he doesn’t know any historical lessons). At some point, all that strong-arming of underlings gives them reason to be relieved when the guy finally falls. How many of “the best people” from his administration does he now disparage and rant about at rallies and on Twitter? At some point, people are simply done with it.
There has been a persistent rumor thatTrump would flee to Scotland.
However, The head of the Scottish government said that Scotland would bar his entry.
Surely Putin will welcome him.
Fascinating. I wonder how that affects the Trump golf courses.
I suspect that Putin has gotten whatever intelligence he was going to get out of his Useful Idiot, but perhaps there is something to be gained by him by Trump running his new media network from Russia. Will be interesting to see what happens.
Better not leave behind any cheesburger wrappers with DNA on them, Donnie!
His favorite banker at Deutsche Bank just retired. Anyway, with all the negative publicity (Jane Mayer’s book, etc.), DT can’t go to that well ever again. The NY Attorney General and the Manhattan DA are coming after the Trump family, and it isn’t to play. DT can’t pardon himself out of this.
a consummation devoutly to be wished …
Cry, the beloved country. I never read the book but loved the title. It seems so apt right now.
You should read it. Used to use it my geography and government classes. The scene of a father reading his son’s papers resonates in every age.
I wish Trump could have attended your geography and government classes. He might have learned something. https://frontpagelive.com/2020/01/29/george-conways-hilarious-list-proves-trump-has-issues-with-geography/
Agree, Greg. It’s an important book. We read it in high school English. Everyone should absolutely read it.
Brings back so many good memories about teaching. In my government class, I switched from Paton’s book to Andre Brink’s A Dry White Season. Just as powerful and a great book to use in class that generated great discussions. That was in the late 80s when Mandela was still in prison. Never realized how much autonomy I had until I read Diane’s books and the comments on this blog. I just decided what I would teach and didn’t have to clear it with anyone. I wish all teachers had that freedom and trust. I wish I had appreciated it at the time! Might still be a teacher if I did.
I watched The Social Dilemma on Netflix about the hold social media has on Americans and many of the bad actors who exploit this for financial gain. This is very much what happened in 2020. The RNC and the Trump campaign found potential supporters through social media and fed them misinformation resulting in 74,000,000 voting for Trump and a House of Representatives that reduced the number of Democratic representatives in that body. Although I agree the Republican Party of Eisenhour is gone, the level of digital manipulation means that certain actors no longer need a sane Republican Party. The Lincoln Project has done noble work for Democracy, but ongoing proclamations will not break the Republican cult as long as the mechanism of tech exploitation is not put in check. Steve Schmidt’s old Republican Party has shriveled on the vine, but those carrying the Republican name today are very much alive.
A not-so-minor correction: PUTIN’S GRU AND THE RNC and the Trump campaign found potential supporters through social media and fed them misinformation resulting in 74,000,000 voting for Trump and a House of Representatives that reduced the number of Democratic representatives in that body.
https://time.com/5565991/russia-influence-2016-election/
But very well said, Mr. Bonner!
Not sure the autocrats (I assume he means trump and company) will roll over the rest of the republicans. He is correct in that the typical fiscal conservative republican will not vote with the trumpists. There is too much to divide them.
The real question is whether there will rise a third party for real this time, and whether third parties are a natural consequence of a mature democracy. The democrats have always had a hard time keeping it together. FDR held a bucking horse for his first 8 years. Now perhaps the republicans will have trouble with its alliance of the big pickup people and the luxury car people.
This is the end…
Of the beginning.
The Repugnican Party is doomed, but not for this reason, though this reason won’t help.
Here’s the problem the Repugnicans actually face: If you poll American young people, they are overwhelmingly on the opposite side on ALL the major issues, including the ones that have enabled the Reagon-to-Trump Repugnicans to fire up an uneducated base: god, abortion, and guns. And the fastest growing demographic groups in the US–blacks and Hispanics–are overwhelmingly Democratic. At the Trump rant in Georgia last night, there were a bunch of people standing behind him wearing “Blacks for Trump Ti-shirts.” Many of these were white people. Like the non-Hispanic whites wearing “Latinos for Trump T-shirts” so common at his rallies in previous years. In places like Texas and Flor-uh-duh, every election now is razor thin. If it weren’t for vote fixing, the Republicans would ALREADY be losing every time. And the trade-off that the Repugnicans made with Trump–embracing Trump, Bannon, Session, and Miller’s white supremacy–hasn’t helped them with people of color.
So, it’s simply a matter of demographics. They will soon be outnumbered by a lot. They can change, or they will go the way of the Know-Nothings.
Physicist Max Planck once said that
“A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it. . .
Perhaps it is true of political parties as well.
But I guess it would be proponents not opponents in this case.
Yikes. Reagan. Oh, these covfefes!!!
Sadly, I think we’re seeing the beginning not the end. 74M of us voted for Trump and the vast percentage believe he actually won. The Democratic Party, a party that lost seats in the House, unheard of when your presidential candidate wins, is increasingly being torn asunder… the “squad” versus the “old guard.”
In Europe Poland and Hungary elected far right leaders, the Philippines, Brazil and India also …
Can Biden turn the tide?
I fear his own party may be an enormous obstacle..
The lure of authoritarianism is attractive, as are addictive drugs.
I have this same concern, Peter. The Know-Nothings could gain ower in 2024 under a smarter, more articulate, slicker, more charismatic Trump. This could easily happen. Then, the end of the American experiment.
cx: could gain power in 2024 under a smarter, more articulate, younger, slicker, more knowledgeable, more charismatic Trumpling.
The Trumpling Scenario, I’m calling it. It could be the last Hoo-rah for U.S. quasi-democracy.
Watching “O Brother, Where Art Thou” for the 8th or 10th time. One of the greatest movies ever.
Funniest movie: “We’re the Millers.”
Lord, I love “O Brother”! I have to see “We’re the Millers.”
I think the new brand of trumpist will need the support of a disintegrating Democratic party to win. The division has already been labeled on this blog between those who consider themselves liberals and those who would call themselves leftists. Ideological purity tests are not the sole purview of the far right. Trump managed to get 74 million people to vote for him. If the Democratic party splits on ideological lines, we are in real trouble.
We are archaic fossils, for example, why aren’t we communicating on Substack? You say, what? Our nation is dynamic, ever changing, I’m not sure what our “experiment” will look as we move forward, I’m confident that the millennials and other generations will create a better, although different society
Bob Piss, I guess, on all the veterans who won wars for us . . . as a democracy. CBK
I agree, Peter, & also sadly. The Groveling Old Penumbras aren’t going anywhere soon, & then you have the younger ones, perhaps even crazier.
&, then…that other party, which “may be an enormous obstacle.”
Surely, it already is & will continue to be “an enormous obstacle,” be-cause (what Einstein didn’t really say) “Insanity is doing the same thing over & over again & expecting different results.”
The lure of Wall Street is attractive…
“Republicans”, Hoover Institute (e.g. Scott Atlas) and, professors linked to the donor class-
The wife of Hanushek, Macke Raymond, evidently felt compelled last month to describe students in the time of Covid thusly, “Kids are going feral”.
Given Macke’s rarefied situation, Walton-funded at Stanford, what does she know anecdotally about the behavior of representative students across the globe? For a purported education expert to generalize publicly using the term “feral” suggests callous disregard for protocols of acceptable academic research opinion. Some might infer, class contempt.
Self-appointed experts funded by the wealthy feel qualified to opine on everything.
What happened today in Pennsylvania, the GOP majority refused to seat the moderate Democratic incumbent senator whose election had been certified by the state, will
become the Republican norm.
Sen. Jim Brewster’s opponent, Nicole Ziccarelli, is an anti-abortion zealot. Based on the scarcity of her public positions posted on the internet, I presume she’s a single issue candidate.
In 2018, Brewster chastised the Republican-dominated senate for failing to pass legislation for the victims of priest sex abuse.
Authoritarianism and its links to conservative religion pose a dire threat to American democracy.
1864 was the beginning of the end of the Confederacy. Yet, decades later, military bases and states were erected to honor Confederate seditionists/traitors
Maybe I am wrong and Steve Schmidt is a wonderful person. But he is irrelevant today. God bless Stacey Abrams.