Dozens of Republicans who served in former President George W. Bush’s administration are leaving the Republican Party, dismayed by a failure of many elected Republicans to disown former President Donald Trump after his false claims of election fraud sparked a deadly storming of the US Capitol last month. These officials, some who served in the highest echelons of the Bush administration, said they had hoped that a Trump defeat would lead party leaders to move on from the former president and denounce his baseless claims that the November presidential election was stolen. But with most Republican lawmakers sticking to Trump, these officials say they no longer recognize the party they served. Some have ended their membership, others are letting it lapse while a few are newly registered as independents, according to a dozen former Bush officials who spoke with Reuters.
“The Republican Party as I knew it no longer exists. I’d call it the cult of Trump,” said Jimmy Gurulé, who was Undersecretary of the Treasury for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence in the Bush administration. 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 or are cutting ties with it, from conversations he has been having. “The number is growing every day,” Purcell said.
Their defection from the Republican Party after a lifetime of service for many is another clear sign of how a growing intraparty conflict over former President Trump and his legacy is fracturing it. The 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. “We’re having a little bit of a spat right now. But we are going to come together. We have to,” Republican Party Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel said, predicting the party will unite against the agenda of President Joe Biden, a Democrat.
More than half of the Republicans in Congress, eight senators and 139 House representatives, voted to block certification of the election just hours after the Capitol siege. Most Republican Senators have also indicated they would not support the impeachment of former President Donald Trump, making it almost certain that the former president will not be convicted in his Senate trial. Trump was impeached on January 13 by the Democratic-led House of Representatives on charges of “incitement of insurrection,” the only president to be impeached twice. The unwillingness by party leaders to disavow Trump was the final straw for some former Republican officials. “If it continues to be the party of Trump, many of us are not going back,” Rosario Marin, a former Treasurer of the US under Bush, told Reuters. “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.”
