Longtime Republican Strategist Rails Against What GOP Has Become Under Donald Trump

[babylonsister]

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/gop-under-donald-trump-mac-stipanovich_n_5e0eed02c5b6b5a713b85b29

POLITICS 01/03/2020 03:21 am ET
Longtime Republican Strategist Rails Against What GOP Has Become Under Donald Trump
Mac Stipanovich said it “is so far from a shining city on the hill that it’s hard to remember that’s what we used to stand for.”
By Lee Moran


Florida GOP consultant and lobbyist Mac Stipanovich is the latest longtime Republican operative to lament what his party has become under President Donald Trump.

“I became a Republican in ’83 during the time of Ronald Reagan. Then, if you went into the booth and voted Republican, you had a good idea of what you were getting, even if you did not know the candidate,” the 71-year-old, known for his role in the election recount of 2000, said in an interview with the Florida Politics website published Thursday.

“The Trump party now is isolationist,” he noted. “It is protectionist. It is nativist. It is xenophobic. And it is so far from a shining city on the hill that it’s hard to remember that’s what we used to stand for — and I can’t stand it.”

Stipanovich revealed he’d retired last month from the Buchanan Ingersoll & Rooney law firm because of how his staunch opposition of Trump was offending “a substantial number of their clients.”

snip//

“I really don’t have a vision of a post-Trump era anymore. All I know is he’s got to go and then we’ll sort it out after that,” he said, later adding: “I find it sad, but at the same time, in a perverse way, I find it stimulating. It gives me something to focus on and do in this last chapter of my life, which is to oppose what the party I helped build has become.”

[CottonBear]

1. He can fuck off.

He voted for the racist Southern Strategy, the October Surprise, killing unions, putting the mentally ill on the streets, plunging the economy into recession, demonizing people with AIDS, Iran Contra treason, stealing our social security and destroying the social safety net, among other atrocities.

This MFer OWNS everything the GOP has ever done and what it stands for.

[GoCubsGo]

2. He was just railing on his pal, Scarborough's show just now, too.

All I can say to him is: Bed. Made. Lie.

I'm more than happy to watch the GOP destroying themselves. I'm not happy to see them take our country down with them in the process.

[JHB]

3. In 2000 Stipanovich was Katherine Harris' "brain" during the Florida recount

The GOP didn't become what it is under Trump, Mac. It became that under you and how you were perfectly willing to burn down everything to win.


http://www.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/1511/02/csr.01.html

CNN SPECIAL REPORTS
Bush Versus Gore, the Endless Election. Aired 9-10p ET
Aired November 2, 2015 - 21:00 ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED
***
BAKER: She was very nervous. She was quite young and my recollection is this Mac Stipanovich was her adviser and he was a solid person.

BORGER: A well-respected Tallahassee lobbyist with ties to Jeb Bush and a long history in Republican politics, Mac Stipanovich became Katherine Harris' brain.

STIPANOVICH: I explained to her you don't have any friends. Let's assume we're not going to have any friends when this is over and then we're going to be loathed by the media for the rest of our lives and through the lives of our grandchildren. That's not what's important here today. We're going to elect a president of the United States. Forget all the rest of that stuff.

BORGER: As Americans watched the partisans duke it out daily on live T.V., behind the scenes Mac was plotting the Republican path to victory.

STIPANOVICH: I called senior staff together and I said we're not going to break any laws, but I want you to forget about the intend of love, we're going to bring this election in brilliant and we're going to fight them tooth-and-nail, house-to-house, hand-to-hand and we were going to hold Florida unless they sent in federal troops.

BORGER: He knew exactly what he had to do, stop recounting votes and preserve Bush's election night lead no matter how small.

STIPANOVICH: We actually believe the result was right. I said George Bush has won this election and it is our job to make it so and we're going to rapidly as possible close off any option, any path that could be followed, that produces any result other than that one.

People are going to watch us and be appalled, oh, my God, they corrupt bastards, they stole the election. No, we won the election.

[Raster]

4. Isn't this/that just a fucking tragedy...

... tRump* is not the disease, just a noxious, toxic, sociopathic, narcissistic symptom. The GOP* has been courting the crazy for years, and now those psychotic chickens are coming home to roost.

Vote. Every. Republican. Out. Of. Office.
None deserves re-election. All a part of the problem.
Nothing will ever get better in this country until the GOP* is vanquished to the dustbin of history.

[gratuitous]

5. What Republicans used to stand for, Mac?

Last edited Fri Jan 3, 2020, 12:00 PM - Edit history (1)

Same as always: Me first and fuck you. That much has been a constant for nearly a century in the Republican party, and your ersatz regret that the party is now at the acme (we hope) of its decades-long program is almost too precious for words. You don't get to help clean up the mess you made. Retire in shame, and live out the hopefully few years you have left watching the surviving victims of your political policies rout every last one of the blood-gargling psychopaths you enabled out of public life.

[ProfessorGAC]

6. Dead On, Grat!

Especially "Me first and fuck you."
If I could rec a post, I'd do so.

[Polybius]

7. "The Trump party now is isolationist"

That's actually neo-con speak. They are not on our side, they are instead attacking Trump because he hasn't gotten us in enough wars (yet). Stipanovich is actually a war-mongering Cheney thug.

[Baitball Blogger]

8. And the sad thing is that Republicans think they can regain everything once Trump is

voted out of office.