More than 100 Republican former officials, including some who worked in the Trump administration, are preparing to leave the GOP they view as being too firmly in the grip of former President Donald Trump.
This band of impending defectors are signing a letter, expected to be released on Thursday, one day after a vote by House Republicans to boot Rep. Liz Cheney, a vocal Trump critic who voted to impeach him earlier this year, as conference chairwoman. Organizers told Reuters that the group is ready, barring a sudden change in direction by the GOP, to explore the prospect of a breakaway party.
“I’m one of those in the group that feels very strongly that if we can’t get the GOP back to a rational party that supports free minds, free markets, and free people, I’m out, and a lot of people are coming with me,” said Miles Taylor, an organizer behind the effort.
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Taylor, the former Trump administration official who claimed to be a part of an internal government “resistance” through his work as “Anonymous,” added that he still considers himself a Republican but one that is “hanging on by the skin of [his] teeth.”
Other signatories of the letter, headlined A Call For American Renewal, include former ambassadors, governors, congressional members, and Cabinet secretaries. Among them are former Bush-era Transportation Secretary Mary Peters, ex-Reps. Charlie Dent, Barbara Comstock, Reid Ribble, and Mickey Edwards, as well as former Govs. Tom Ridge and Christine Todd Whitman.
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Trump spokesman Jason Miller dismissed the group. “These losers left the Republican Party when they voted for Joe Biden,” he told Reuters.
