'None of this is in any way conservative': Republicans grumble about MAGA takeover of party

19 July 2024

This week's Republican National Convention (RNC) suggests the transition of the Republican Party from the party of Ronald Reagan to the party of Donald Trump is officially complete. And some Republicans are bemoaning the GOP's MAGA makeover.

In a Friday report, the Washington Post quoted several Republicans — including some who served in Trump's first administration — lamenting how they no longer feel at home in their chosen party. One of the attendees of the 2024 RNC in Milwaukee, Wisconsin was Marc Short, who served as chief of staff to former Vice President Mike Pence. Short was alarmed that multiple RNC speakers embraced tariffs, distancing the U.S. from its commitment to the NATO alliance, allowed a labor union boss to trash corporations and seemed to want to "walk away from life and traditional marriage and stop defending Taiwan."

"None of this is in any way conservative," Short told the Post.

There were notably almost no non-MAGA voices at the 2024 GOP convention. The Post noted that former President George W. Bush was not in attendance, nor Vice President Dick Cheney. 2012 presidential and vice presidential nominees Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan were also not there, and former Vice President Dan Quayle was also absent.

Former House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) was in Milwaukee and spoke at a hotel a few blocks away from the Fiserv Forum, but never took the main stage. Pence's absence from the RNC was noticed by several delegates who spoke to Mother Jones, telling the outlet that the former vice president "betrayed his country" by refusing to block Congress' certification of electoral votes on January 6, 2021.

John Bolton, who was Trump's former National Security Adviser, told the paper he hd no regrets about missing out on his party's quadrennial nominating convention despite attending eight others.

"I certainly wasn’t going to come and celebrate Donald Trump, that’s for sure," Bolton said. "I think I’m in good company missing this one, because there are a lot of us."

Kyle Sweetser, a self-described "Reagan Republican" from Alabama, has appeared in several ads by the "Republican Voters Against Trump" super PAC. told the Post that "Trump isn't a Republican" but is instead a "MAGA populist."

“I don’t even know what you’d want to call his foreign policy, but I call it left of [Joe] Biden. His trade policy is something that Bernie Sanders would have supported," Sweetser said. "A principle of conservatism is free trade. He’s against that. He’s against free markets.”

Click here to read the Post's report in its entirety (subscription required).

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