Florida GOP consultant and lobbyist Mac Stipanovich is the latest longtime Republican operative to lament what his party has become under President Donald Trump.
“I became a Republican in ’83 during the time of Ronald Reagan. Then, if you went into the booth and voted Republican, you had a good idea of what you were getting, even if you did not know the candidate,” Stipanovich, known for his role in the election recount of 2000, said in an interview with the Florida Politics website published Thursday.
“The Trump party now is isolationist,” he said. “It is protectionist. It is nativist. It is xenophobic. And it is so far from a shining city on the hill that it’s hard to remember that’s what we used to stand for — and I can’t stand it.”
Stipanovich revealed he’d retired last month from the Buchanan Ingersoll & Rooney law firm because his staunch opposition of Trump was offending “a substantial number of their clients.”
“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. It’s bad for business, but I can’t not do it. So, it’s better for me to retire,” he said.
Stipanovich claimed Trump is the first demagogue to become U.S. president “and that’s what makes him uniquely dangerous.” Trump is also “the ultimate con man” and “it’s just amazing how many rubes there are in the country.”
“I really don’t have a vision of a post-Trump era anymore. All I know is he’s got to go and then we’ll sort it out after that,” he said, later 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.”