It is not surprising that the reputedly liberal New York Times published an author’s column calling for Democrats to vote in the upcoming midterm congressional elections.
Surprisingly, this column is written by two prominent members of the Republican Party – former New Jersey Governor Christine Todd-Whitman, who ran the EPA under President George W. Bush, and Miles Taylor, a former senior National Security official who served in the administrations of George W. Bush and Donald Trump. He is known for publishing a sharply accusatory article in the New York Times in 2018 criticizing the Trump administration (anonymously, since he was still working in that administration).
Whitman and Taylor identify themselves as “anti-Trump moderates” and urge their party members to vote for moderate Democrats and against Trump-backed “political extremists” from the Republican Party. While the very idea of electing Democrats to Congress may look unpleasant for Republicans, it should be done “for the greater good,” the authors of the article argue.
“For us rationally-minded remnants of the Republican Party, the best thing is to band together with Democrats to protect American institutions of power, defeat far-right candidates and elect worthy representatives, including moderate Democrats,” Whitman and Taylor write. In the long term, moderate Republicans may have to split from the Republican Party and create a separate “third party”, the authors conclude, but removing the pro-Trump Republicans from power in the midterm elections is a necessary first step.
Newspaper headline:
Split in the Republican Party
.