Florida Republican Retired So That He Could Spend “Last Chapter” Of Life Opposing What The GOP “Has Become” Under Trump

He's losing his support in droves.


613
613 points

Despite Trump’s near-constant claims that his formal impeachment process has only brought him closer to a 2020 win, it’s becoming strikingly clear than GOPers are jumping ship at a rather alarming rate as the election season quickly approaches.

Over the past several months, there’s been no denying the exodus of Republicans who can no longer, in good conscience, support the tyrannical dictator-wannabe that is Donald Trump. For some of them, it was the brown children dying in cages at our borders that served as the final straw. For others, it was the evidence brought to light against Trump during the very public impeachment trials that sealed the deal.

For a select handful, they never could get behind Donald and his disgusting ways, in spite of their lifelong loyalty to the Grand Old Party.

However, it’s not just individual voters with absolutely no real pull inside the government that are turning their back on number 45.

More than a few prominent figures within the GOP are not just turning their back on Donald Trump, but vowing to fight against him and his reign of terror with their last breath, if that’s what it takes.

Joining those ranks is top Florida Republican lobbyist and consultant and former chief of staff to ex-Governor Bob Martinez, John McKager Stipanovich, who stated in a scathing Florida Politics op-ed that the law firm he worked in did not want him “tearing into Trump” and other congressional Republicans — so in lieu of keeping his mouth shut and being complacent, he decided he’d just retire.

Stipanovich, who served as the Florida state executive director of Ronald Reagan’s 1984 reelection campaign stated that he does not “have a vision of a post-Trump era” for the party he’s belonged to his entire life but that he knows “[Trump’s] got to go.”

According to a report from the Tampa Bay Times, Stipanovich officially left his position at the lobbying firm Buchanan Ingersoll & Rooney last month.

In the fiery op-ed, the former GOP lobbyist wrote that he considered himself a never-Trumper “from the moment he descended from on high on his golden escalator” — referencing Trump’s extravagant 2016 presidential campaign announcement.

“And I do consider him to be an existential threat to American democracy,” he penned. “He attacks the very concept of truth. The idea that there’s no truth, that we have no shared epistemological framework as a people — that there are literally at least two entirely different realities where we can’t even describe what happened and understand each other when we speak even though we speak the same language — is very dangerous, very dangerous.”

“My law firm does not want me giving interviews and writing op-ed pieces, tearing into Trump, tearing into congressional Republicans, tearing into Republicans in Tallahassee,” Stipanovich stated. “It’s bad for business, but I can’t not do it. So, it’s better for me to retire.”

He stated that the GOP has long had a “nasty underbelly” and that “Trump’s genius was that he recognized the rot” and “reveled” in it.

“I really don’t have a vision of a post-Trump era anymore,” he said of the GOP. “All I know is he’s got to go and then we’ll sort it out after that.”

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.”

You can read the full op-ed here.

Featured image via Political Tribune gallery

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