Regretful Republican looks back on support of party – and despairs

A conservative confidante of Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY) expressed remorse for helping to pave the way for "evil" Donald Trump.

John David Dyche, a Louisville attorney and former Courier-Journal columnist, broke with the Republican Party in 2016 over Trump, but he wrote an op-ed for the Kentucky Lantern website apologizing for helping to create the conditions that allowed the reality TV star capture control of the GOP.

"When Trump appeared on the political scene, I did not take him seriously and expected Republicans to repudiate him quickly and emphatically," Dyche wrote. "He was then, and is even more so now, the antithesis of actual, principled conservatism."

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"To my dismay, Republicans who had loudly thumped the Bible and William J. Bennett’s 'The Book of Virtues' either openly embraced, tacitly collaborated with, or timidly tolerated Trump, a moral obscenity of a man who personified virtually every vice and normalized vulgarity from 'grab ’em by the p—y,' to liability for sexual assault, to business fraud, and much more," he added.

Dyche watched in horror as Republicans shrugged off their conservative principles on free trade, fiscal responsibility, constitutional order, the rule of law, national security and democracy itself to follow along on Trump's depravity.

"To stand with or silently tolerate Trump and Trumpism is to effectively support his bigotry, criminality, demagoguery, despotism, hate, hypocrisy, ignorance, indecency, insurrection, irrationality, lying, narcissism, proto-fascism, sacrilege, sedition, venality, violence, and vulgarity," he wrote.

Dyche singled out McConnell, the subject of his 2009 political biography, for scrutiny as “the principal enabler of the Trump agenda" and willing supporter of his 2024 candidacy for president, and he begged forgiveness for ever having praised or supported the Republican Party.

"Trump is not merely dangerous; he is evil," Dyche wrote. "This is not something I say lightly, but it must be said. It remains difficult to understand and accept that so many Republicans support, even worship, this bad man, but they do, and they will no matter what."

"By my past public support of the Republican Party and its craven Trump collaborators I to some degree helped it happen," Dyche concluded. "For that, Kentucky, I apologize."