Anti-President Trump GOP strategist Steve Schmidt announced on Wednesday he has quit the Republican Party and will now vote for the Democrats.
Schmidt, the chief strategist for Sen. John McCain’s losing 2008 bid for the White House, jumped to his Twitter account to denounce the GOP as “indecent and immoral” for supporting Donald Trump, MSN News reported.
“29 years and nine months ago I registered to vote and became a member of The Republican Party which was founded in 1854 to oppose slavery and stand for the dignity of human life,” Schmidt tweeted on June 20.
“Today I renounce my membership in the Republican Party. It is fully the party of Trump,” he added.
Schmidt then went on a Twitter rant to attack the GOP and the nation over his disdain for Trump. The now-former Republican cited the Trump administration’s policy of zero tolerance for illegal aliens breaking U.S. immigration laws and the separation of migrants and children as the main reasons for his departure from the GOP.
“This child separation policy is connected to the worst abuse of humanity in our history,” Schmidt tweeted. “It is connected by the same evil that separated families during slavery and dislocated tribes and broke up Native American families. It is immoral and must be repudiated. Our country is in trouble. Our politics are badly broken.”
Schmidt went on to attack the Republican leadership for allowing Trump to create what he called “internment camps for babies.”
“Everyone [sic] of these complicit leaders will carry this shame through history. There [sic] legacies will be ones of well earned [sic] ignominy. They have disgraced their country and brought dishonor to the Party of Lincoln,” said the operative, who was rarely part of a winning election during his days as a GOP strategist.
Among other name-calling and proclamations, Schmidt also said the GOP has become a “danger to our democracy”:
Follow Warner Todd Huston on Twitter @warnerthuston.