A dire warning from former GOP officials is urging voters to reject 'pro-Trump extremists' in 2022

On Monday, writing for The New York Times, former Gov. Christine Todd Whitman (R-NJ) and former Trump Homeland Security official Miles Taylor wrote a dire warning to voters, telling them to reject their longtime party and back Democrats to deny a Trumpist congressional majority in 2022.

"Rational Republicans are losing the G.O.P. 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 Democratic Party," wrote Whitman and Taylor. "Earlier this year we joined more than 150 conservatives — including former governors, senators, congressmen, cabinet secretaries, and party leaders — in calling for the Republican Party to divorce itself from Trumpism or else lose our support, perhaps by forming a new political party. Rather than return to founding ideals, G.O.P. leaders in the House and in many states have now turned belief in conspiracy theories and lies about stolen elections into a litmus test for membership and running for office."

Whitman, who has been a longtime critic of Trump, and Taylor, who wrote the infamous anonymous New York Times op-ed claiming to be part of a "resistance" movement inside Trump's White House, rejected the idea of forming a third party for now, fearful it would backfire — and concluded the best way to set the GOP on a healthy course is to join with Democrats to defeat it.

"We cannot tolerate the continued hijacking of a major U.S. political party by those who seek to tear down our Republic's guardrails or who are willing to put one man's interests ahead of the country," they wrote. "We cannot tolerate the leaders of the G.O.P. — in 2022 or in the presidential election in 2024 — refusing to accept the results of elections or undermining the certification of those results should they lose. To that end, concerned conservatives must join forces with Democrats on the most essential near-term imperative: blocking Republican leaders from regaining control of the U.S. House of Representatives."

"Some of us have worked in the past with the House Republican leader, Kevin McCarthy, but as long as he embraces Mr. Trump's lies, he cannot be trusted to lead the chamber, especially in the run-up to the next presidential election," they wrote. "And while many of us support and respect the Senate Republican leader, Mitch McConnell, it is far from clear that he can keep Mr. Trump's allies at bay, which is why the Senate may be safer remaining as a divided body rather than under Republican control."

"A great deal depends on our willingness to consider new paths of political reform," they concluded. "From the halls of Congress to our own communities, the fate of our Republic might well rest on forming alliances with those we least expected."

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