Good and bad reasons to reject Trumpism

A few Republicans are threatening to jilt the GOP if the party doesn’t reject the influence of former President Donald Trump.

A group of 150 current and former Republican leaders recently signed “A Call for American Renewal,” which lays out a conservative platform contrary to Trump’s. The statement calls on Republicans to “either re-imagine a party dedicated to our founding ideals or else hasten the creation of such an alternative.” That is, direct the Republican Party away from Trumpism, or start a new party.

There are a few Iowa connections among the signatories.

Former U.S. Rep. Jim Leach, who represented Iowa in Congress from 1977 to 2007, is on the list. So are Bill Weld and Joe Walsh, who campaigned for the 2020 Iowa Republican caucuses during their short-lived challenges against Trump for the GOP presidential nomination.

I’m a fellow anti-Trump Republican and an advocate for third-party inclusion in the political system, so I would love to support efforts like this. Too often, though, they turn out to be fronts for purveyors of military adventurism.

The statement of principles in the “Call for American Renewal” mostly consists of thinly veiled and perfectly reasonable criticisms of Trump. The signers oppose the disenfranchisement of voters; condemn all forms of bigotry; reaffirm the Constitution's guarantee of free speech and freedom of the press; and oppose the employment of fearmongering, conspiracism and falsehoods.

But then we get to the last plank, where they say the United States “must work in conjunction with friends and allies to advance worthy interests abroad and to promote freedom by example and with the judicious application of power.”

Advancing worthy interests abroad and promoting freedom through the application of power sounds a lot like the talking points that got us into and prolonged the conflict in Iraq. And Afghanistan. And Iraq the other times. And Vietnam. And Korea.

These open letters, guest columns and manifestos from anti-Trump Republicans sometimes feel like Scooby-Doo unmasking gags. Let’s see who this really is: It was the military interventionists all along!

In a haphazard way, and despite his many huge flaws, Trump challenged the conservative consensus that America ought to be the center of world politics, whatever force necessary. The people who thought we could administer democracy to the world at the tip of a Hellfire missile didn’t take kindly to it.

It’s hard to shake the feeling that some of Trump’s most prominent GOP critics might have been pacified if he had been more aggressive in Syria, courted conflict with Iran and shut up about wanting to pull troops out of Afghanistan.

Miles Taylor, a former Trump staffer and lead organizer of the “Call for American Renewal,” in 2018 wrote a guest column, which at the time was anonymous, in the New York Times blasting the then-president. He explained how he and other skeptics in the administration — “adults in the room,” as he put it — were subverting Trump’s worst instincts.

Taylor dedicated more words to foreign policy in the bombshell op-ed than to any other issue. He tried to rekindle Cold War tension and called for a more aggressive posture against Russia.

After Taylor left his post in Trump’s Department of Homeland Security, he published a signed piece in the Washington Post in 2020 again bashing Trump on foreign policy. He praised a book written by John Bolton, the staunchly pro-war national security adviser fired by Trump.

In the book, “The Room Where It Happened,” Bolton lamented that Trump didn’t get more involved in Venezuela’s political crisis and details how he sabotaged Trump’s plan to improve relations with Iran.

“ (T) here is little to add, other than to say that Bolton got it right,” Taylor wrote.

A news release announcing the “Call for American Renewal” defends U.S. Rep. Liz Cheney, an unrepentant champion for perpetual war who recently was ousted by fellow Republicans from her caucus leadership post.

Cheney got heat for telling the truth — that Joe Biden won the 2020 presidential election fair and square and that Trump’s insistence otherwise represents a “crusade to undermine our democracy.” It was good to remove a warmonger from leadership, but it was for the wrong reason.

These open letters, guest columns and manifestos from anti-Trump Republicans sometimes feel like Scooby-Doo unmasking gags. Let’s see who this really is: It was the military interventionists all along!

They’re not all bad guys, to be clear. Leach, for example, certainly is not a warmonger. Notably, he was among six House Republicans to vote against authorizing the Iraq War in 2002.

It highlights the fact that the anti-Trump movement within the Republican Party is a small one. With few potential allies, you take who you can get, even if they’re Cheney or Bolton.

Trump still is the de facto leader of our party. He tramples on free-market ideals, villainizes peaceful immigrants, shows contempt for the First Amendment and rejects legitimate election results.

“My view is that a political party that can't be outraged at an insurrection and still is being influenced by a figure who can't be trusted to tell the truth is in need of reform,” Leach wrote to me in an email, referring to the Jan. 6 riots at the Capitol.

What else is an anti-Trump, anti-war Republican to do?

adam.sullivan@thegazette.com; (319) 339-3156