Two GOP officials urge Republican voters to support Democrats in 2022

WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW:

• Two GOP officials urged voters to make sure “rational Republicans” don’t lose the “GOP civil war.”
• The NY Times op-ed was written by Miles Taylor, a former Department of Homeland Security chief of staff, and Christine Todd Whitman, a former GOP Gov. of New Jersey.
• They believe there’s a need to elect a “strong contingent of moderate Democrats” in 2022.

Two GOP officials are urging Republican voters to vote Democrat in the 2022 midterm elections. The two Republicans believe that this might be a way for the GOP to “battle pro-Trump extremists.”

On Monday, Miles Taylor and Christine Todd Whitman wrote an op-ed in The New York Times.

Taylor was the chief of staff of the Department of Homeland Security during the Trump administration while Whitman is a former governor of New Jersey.

In 2018, Taylor wrote an op-ed in The Times under the pen name “Anonymous”, describing a “resistance” of Trump administration officials working to tamper the former president’s “worst inclinations.”

Together, the two asked that the GOP’s base consider supporting Democrats so that “conservative pragmatists” could retake control of the Republican party.

“Rational Republicans are losing the party civil war. And the only near-term way to battle pro-Trump extremists is for all of us to team up on key races and overarching political goals with our longtime political opponents: the Democrats,” Taylor and Whitman wrote.

“It’s a strategy that has worked,” they wrote. “Mr. Trump lost re-election in large part because Republicans nationwide defected, with seven percent who voted for him in 2016 flipping to support Joe Biden, a margin big enough to have made some difference in key swing states.”

For Taylor and Whitman, this move is necessary because the Republican leadership has “turned belief in conspiracy theories and lies about stolen elections into a litmus test for membership and running for office.” The two also suggested that if Trump-backed candidates continued to win in the primaries, they and their allies might start a new, center-right party.

“The best hope for the rational remnants of the Republican Party is for us to form an alliance with Democrats to defend American institutions, defeat far-right candidates, and elect honorable representatives next year – including a strong contingent of moderate Democrats,” Taylor and Whitman wrote.

Their strategy would involve Rep[ublican voters supporting Democrats in “difficult races” like Virginia Rep. Abigail Spanberger, Michigan Rep. Elissa Slotkin, and Arizona Sen. Mark Kelly. They also advocated defending a “small nucleus of courageous Republicans” like Reps. Liz Cheney, Adam Kinzinger, and Peter Meijer.

In September, Kinzinger said that he thought the GOP shouldn’t win a majority in the House if it is “pushing division and pushing lies.” Cheney, on the other hand, said last month that she is not ready to give the GOP up to the “voices of extremism.

The Wyoming representative even revealed that many Republicans both in the House and the Senate have cheered her on privately in her fight against Trump.

Source: MSN