Justin Amash, the lone Republican to call for President Trump’s impeachment, announces he is leaving the party because ‘our politics are in a death spiral’
- Amash published a Washington Post op-ed on Thursday, the 4th of July, announcing his departure
- He said he was ‘disenchanted by’ and ‘frightened of’ what politics had become
Justin Amash, the lone Republican to call for President Trump’s impeachment, announced he was leaving the GOP on Thursday in a scathing, 4th of July op-ed where he slammed the country’s politics and said they were ‘in a death spiral’.
Amash did not mention the president by name in his Washington Post piece, but said he had become ‘disenchanted by’ and ‘frightened of’ the state of the party he formerly stood for.
‘Modern politics is trapped in a partisan death spiral, but there is an escape,’ he wrote.
‘Today, I am declaring my independence and leaving the Republican Party.
Amash tweeted a link to his Washington Post op-ed on Thursday to announce his departure from the Republican party
Amash, the Representative for Michigan’s 3rd congressional district, was the lone Republican to call for President Trump’s impeachment, announced he was leaving the GOP on Thursday in a scathing, 4th of July op-ed
‘No matter your circumstance, I’m asking you to join me in rejecting the partisan loyalties and rhetoric that divide and dehumanize us.
‘I’m asking you to believe that we can do better than this two-party system — and to work toward it. If we continue to take America for granted, we will lose it,’ he added.
‘The Republican Party, I believed, stood for limited government, economic freedom and individual liberty — principles that had made the American Dream possible for my family.
‘In recent years, though, I’ve become disenchanted with party politics and frightened by what I see from it. The two-party system has evolved into an existential threat to American principles and institutions,’ he wrote.
In May, Amash joined Democrats by calling for an impeachment inquiry.
He has long been a critic of president Trump and fumed over Attorney General William Barr’s handling of the Mueller investigation and subsequent report.
In his complaints about it, he drew Trump’s ire.
‘Never a fan of @justinamash, a total lightweight who opposes me and some of our great Republican ideas and policies just for the sake of getting his name out there through controversy.
‘If he actually read the biased Mueller Report, ‘composed’ by 18 Angry Dems who hated Trump, he would see that it was nevertheless strong on NO COLLUSION and, ultimately, NO OBSTRUCTION.
‘Anyway, how do you Obstruct when there is no crime and, in fact, the crimes were committed by the other side?
‘Justin is a loser who sadly plays right into our opponents hands!’ he tweeted.