‘GOP’ has become the ‘white grievance Republican Party’: former GOP nominee

GOP senators received harsh criticism from a former GOP congressional nominee.

"Republican Senator Tom Cotton (R-Ark.), in a word, is sinister. His latest attack on Supreme Court nominee Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson is reprehensible. For us as American citizens to continue to look the other way, clutch our pearls, and say the Republican Party has been temporarily overtaken by Trump and his forces, and that someday soon, more reasonable people like former Texas Congressman Will Hurd or current Republican Congresswoman Liz Cheney will rescue the party, is lunacy. Cotton is the new Republican Party," Sophia Nelson wrote for The Grio.

Nelson also served as legal counsel to Gov. Christine Todd Whitman (R-NJ) and as GOP counsel on the House Government Reform and Oversight Committee.

"The real issue is that the Republican Party is one of only two major political parties in the United States, and when one of our two major political parties acts openly racist, invites white nationalists into its membership, embraces wild conspiracy theories about Democrats being secret pedophiles operating out of pizza parlors, I think it’s fair to say they no longer are a serious party. I say this as someone who was a Republican for most of my adult life," she explained. "Senators Cotton, Josh Hawley (R-Mo.), Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and Marsh Blackburn (R-Tenn.) are the face of the new white grievance Republican Party. And that is the point here. They are not crazy. They represent a segment of our population that wants to go backward on race, equality, progress and inclusion—a segment that, day by day, is growing in power and influence through disinformation and crass political attacks."

Nelson said it was a "sad column" for her to write.