A former Republican lawmaker says that people are fleeing the GOP in a great migration.
The shift started slowly within the party, but now it's picking up speed, according to Arizona Republican Jeff Flake, former U.S. senator, representative and the former U.S. ambassador to Turkey from 2022 to 2024, who shared his analysis in an opinion piece for The Washington Post.
"But once the wind really changes, the movement becomes unmistakable. I believe that a migration has begun within the Republican Party," Flake writes.
"The first signs are visible. A few Republican members of Congress — some of them proud standard-bearers of the MAGA movement — have begun to distance themselves from President Donald Trump," he writes.
Flake describes how the MAGA movement is losing momentum, citing Trump's tariffs, his call to end the filibuster and emerging voices, including Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) criticizing him and her party. The Democratic victories this week will only add to the MAGA defections, he adds.
"The midterms, now less than a year away, clearly favor the Democrats — particularly in the House, where they are poised to take the majority. And if that happens, it will not be because Democrats have suddenly found the perfect message. It will be because the president’s economic policies are fundamentally misaligned with both conservative principles and economic reality," Flake writes.
Remaining Republicans will now have to make a decision ahead of the 2026 midterm elections.
"They can cling, as many Democrats did in 2024, to an economic message that ignores reality. Or they can begin the slow, necessary work of reclaiming the party of free markets and global engagement," he writes.
GOP lawmakers who are not on the 2026 ballots do have an advantage of "perspective" and the understanding that "reputations endure."
But that shift is happening — and it matters, he adds.
"Some will frame this as betrayal. It’s not. It’s survival. The GOP cannot sustain itself indefinitely as a movement defined by isolationism abroad and populism at home. Those instincts may thrill a rally crowd, but they’re corrosive to governing. Eventually, voters tire of performative anger and want competence," Flake writes.