Steve Schmidt: ‘Possibility’ that GOP ‘Looks Like Berlin in May of 1945’ Post-Election

Monday on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” Steve Schmidt, the former campaign manager for Sen. John McCain’s (R-AZ) 2008 presidential campaign, warned the Republican Party is headed toward extinction following the 2016 presidential election if the direction presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump is taking the party isn’t altered.

Schmidt likened what the party could look like post-election to Berlin in 1945, adding that how is known today will “not endure” past November.

“I would disagree that they’re all in,” Schmidt said. “I would say what they’re trying to do is walk down the yellow line in the middle of the highway, which is a great place to get run over from. The leader said, we have a two-party system. What I would say back to the leader is not for very much longer. What we talked about, D-day today. Let me give an analogy. There’s every possibility that the Republican Party looks like Berlin in May of 1945 by the time this election is over with. Having been crushed and losing control of the Senate, with our House majority down to less than ten seats, there is a political reckoning coming, Unless and until Republican leaders are able to speak truth to power, if you will, be able to communicate to the American people — you have a great moment during the McCarthy hearings. You had Secretary Welch say, finally, at long last, sir, do you have no sense of decency? Where are the leaders who will put principle over politics? And as much as anything, with this election shows the American people yearning for is toughness, is guts, and courage.”

“But courage not to speak to the darkest impulse, but what has always been true in American history, for leaders to reach out to the better angels of our nature,” he continued. “We talk about D-day. one of the great acts of heroism on that day, the son of a president of the United States, Teddy Roosevelt, Jr., brigadier general — the first man at his insistence off of the landing crafts at Utah Beach — who looks around and realizes immediately they had landed miles to the west. He said it is fine. We start the war from here. And that man, the son of a president, buried next to his brother in that cemetery overlooking the beaches of Omaha, in that army at rest there, was made of Jews and Christians and American Indians and Poles and Germans and all the peoples of the world who came to this place, to this free country. And for the republican nominee, the steward of the party of Abraham Lincoln, to be making these comments and for them to be accommodated, to excuse the way by the leadership of the party, including the Senate Majority Leader, including the Speaker of the House, it guarantees that that political party, the third oldest in the world, will not endure, as we know it today, long past this election in November.”

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