In a blistering opinion piece in the Washington Post, long-time conservative commentator Max Boot called out the Republican Party for becoming the “white-nationalist party with a conservative fringe” under President Donald Trump and advocated for the complete destruction of the GOP as it now stands.
According to Boot, "'Should I stay or should I go now?' That question, posed by the eminent political philosophers known as The Clash, is one that confronts any Republican with a glimmer of conscience. You used to belong to a conservative party with a white-nationalist fringe. Now it’s a white-nationalist party with a conservative fringe. If you’re part of that fringe, what should you do?"
Noting GOP strategist -- and campaign manager for Arizona Republican Sen. John McCain's presidential run -- Steve Schmidt's highly publicized departure from the party, Boot said it is the model for conservatives who have become disgusted with what the GOP has become under Trump.
Explaining his own decision to leave the party, Boot previously wrote that Trump's followers “want to transform the GOP into a European-style nationalist party that opposes cuts in entitlement programs, believes in deportation of undocumented immigrants, white identity politics, protectionism and isolationism backed by hyper-macho threats to bomb the living daylights out of anyone who messes with us.”
"Personally, I’ve thrown up my hands in despair at the debased state of the GOP," Boot wrote. "I don’t want to be identified with the party of the child-snatchers. But I respect principled conservatives who are willing to stay and fight to reclaim a once-great party that freed the slaves and helped to win the Cold War. What I can’t respect are head-in-the-sand conservatives who continue to support the GOP by pretending that nothing has changed."
Noting fellow conservative George Will calling for Republicans to turn their back on the party and vote for Democrats in 2018 midterms, Boot gave that idea a big thumbs up.
"That is why I join Will and other principled conservatives, both current and former Republicans, in rooting for a Democratic takeover of both houses in November," he concluded. "Like postwar Germany and Japan, the Republican Party must first be destroyed before it can be rebuilt."
You can read the whole piece here.