Former House Republican Congressional Committee Investigative Counsel Sophia Nelson declared she is done with her party and put the reason for her departure squarely on the shoulders of the Republican leadership that has thrown its full support behind Donald Trump no matter what he does.
In a column for The Daily Beast, Nelson was unsparing in her appraisal of the GOP under the current president, writing, “I have been a Republican my whole life. No more.Not while Donald Trump remains the head of the party, and the Senate’s Republicans have stood nearly united behind him, rejecting patriotism to protect him.”
Nelson writes that her decision came after watching Republican senators short-circuit the impeachment trial of Trump by refusing to hear from witnesses and additional evidence.
“As an attorney admitted before the illustrious Bar of the U.S. Supreme Court, I cannot associate myself with conduct so cowardly, craven, and unpatriotic, so brazenly partisan and so disrespectful of the Constitution’s impeachment powers,” she explained. “The arguments made by the president’s defense team require us to suspend reality.”
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Noting that she has been a Republican since 1988 after hearing former GOP lawmaker Jack Kemp when he spoke at the Republican convention, Nelson claimed that she was drawn to the GOP by his vision of a party that was “was open and welcoming to people of color.”
That was then and this is now, she explained.
“That Republican party is gone. This new Republican Party is beholden to a lawless, immoral, godless man. I have watched people I have known for decades twist themselves into human pretzels to defend him, excuse him, exalt him,” she wrote. ” The current state of the GOP is not good for anyone in our two-party system that breaks down without lawmakers who can work together, and move legislation forward.”
Nelson added, “The Democratic Party has problems of its own, but that is not my fight. I am not a Democrat, and will never be one. But the party of Trump is shrinking, whitening and aging as it tries to hold onto power in a more diverse America.”
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