Hit the Road Paul
“We’re here for a purpose — and it’s not this petty, childish b------t”.
Representative Paul Mitchell was clearly fed up when he made this statement. The two-term Republican announced his plans to retire months before. This decision was fueled by President Trump’s remarks on a group of ethnically diverse lawmakers known as “The Squad”, who he said should “go back” to their country of origin. Mitchell was one of the few Republican lawmakers to publicly condemn Trump for him, the comment hit home: one of his children was adopted from Russia. As a result on July 24, ten days after Trump’s statements, a clearly emotional Mitchell announced his resignation from the House of Representatives.
Mitchell is part of the exodus of Republican lawmakers that have left Congress under the Trump administration. Since Trump’s inauguration in 2017, nearly 40% of the Republican lawmakers have either left Congress, were defeated or retired. Comparing to how many House Democrats left during Obama’s first term, Trump’s 41 House Republicans vastly outnumbers Obama’s 25. Those who have left range from former Speaker of the House Paul Ryan - who declined to run in the 2018 midterm elections - to Justin Amash, who stated a “partisan death spiral” as his reason for dramatically switching his party affiliation from Republican to Independent earlier this summer.
This mass retreat of Republicans from Congress shows just how much Trump has warped the current Grand Old Party. This change is evident in several areas of Washington from the constant revolving door that has become the White House to the vast turnover of lawmakers we are now seeing in Congress. Many Republicans simply aren’t willing or able to deal with the turbulent nature of the Trump administration. President Trump has shown several times throughout his presidency that he puts a premium on loyalty, and has retaliated against those he deems unloyal. Thus, several Republicans who have decided to separate themselves from Trump's cohort of loyalists - Jeff Flake, Justin Amash, Will Hurd, and Mark Sanford, among others - have seen themselves out. As Trump's rhetoric pushes his proponent-critics out of the sandbox, the GOP's integrity is becoming progressively more suspect.
Gabriel Zita is a junior studying psychology.