Today, in The Washington Post, George Will is writing that Americans should vote for Democrats in the November elections. And, earlier this week, another once staunch Republican -- Steve Schmidt -- urged American voters to do the same. Gary Mason writes:
When I caught up with Mr. Schmidt this week, he was holidaying in Europe. One of the places he visited was the Bény-sur-Mer Canadian War Cemetery, which holds the graves of hundreds of soldiers killed at Normandy. Visiting the cemetery, and thinking of the sacrifices Canadian soldiers made as part of the Allied invasion on D-Day, as well as other joint war missions with the U.S., made him incensed over Mr. Trump’s recent criticisms of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.
“It made me understand even more the danger of having a President who is unravelling the Western alliance as a cowardly and silently complicit Congress watches on,” Mr. Schmidt told me. “We have the U.S. President attack the Prime Minister of Canada, insult our allies, while praising [North Korean dictator] Kim Jong-un and fetishizing every other murderous tyrant, dictator and autocrat in the world.”
The picture Mr. Schmidt paints of the U.S. at the moment is an unnerving one – a President who uses mass rallies, and the repetition of lies, to incite dangerous fervour among his base; a President who dispenses propaganda through news outlets like Fox and the Sinclair Broadcast Group that he says have effectively become arms of the state; a President who believes he is the law and whatever he says is true; a President who addresses the most complex problems by affixing blame to the most vulnerable people he can affix blame to, often minorities.
“The Republican Party is a great threat to freedom and liberty and the U.S.-led global order that is quickly unravelling,” Mr. Schmidt told me. “The Democratic Party is now called to be the sentinels of liberty and freedom. It’s essential that Trumpism be repudiated, and repudiated as fast as possible.”
There are some smart Republicans. But they have officially left the party. They will not join the Democrats. But they're urging their fellow citizens -- this time around -- to vote for them.
Image: Daily Mail
