Ohio GOPer Anthony Gonzalez, Who Voted For Impeachment, Will Not Run For Reelection, Calls Trump ‘Cancer For the Country’

“That’s one of those moments where you say, ‘Is this really what I want for my family when they travel, to have my wife and kids escorted through the airport?’” Gonzalez told the newspaper.

Gonzalez is the first of the 10 House Republicans who voted to impeach Trump to announce that he will not seek reelection. Though Gonzalez has defended his vote, he did not make it a defining issue to the degree that others have, such as Reps. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) or Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.).

Here is Gonzalez’ full statement, posted on Twitter.

He speaks of the “toxic dynamics” within the Republican party as a key factor in his decision. Who can blame the man? It’s scary out there. Standing up for your principles and what’s right makes for enemies. If we have seen one thing in the era of Trump it is how many unstable people there are out there. It used to be not so long ago that politicians could speak their minds freely and battle in the House or Senate but know that in a civil society they could return to hearth and home and be perfectly safe. That is not the case nowadays. Even non-politicians simply doing their jobs, Anthony Fauci being the perfect example, have had to hire private security in order to safely conduct their affairs.

It’s a tragedy for the Republican party that a man of Gonzalez’ caliber, a former professional football player and a businessman, has decided to throw in the towel. When a party starts losing the best talent on its bench, it goes downhill. This is what Trump hath wrought.

But in all truth, that’s been the case with the GOP for some time. Cast your mind back to the Republican convention in 2016. It was surreal. It was held at the Quicken Loans Arena in Cleveland, a sprawling, florescent-lit barn of a place and it was three days of fighting. The delegates from Iowa and Colorado stormed out en masse at one point. At another point a delegate on the floor took off his credentials lanyard and hurled it to the floor — nobody got along with anybody. Donald Trump staged a spectacle with a smoke machine and I remember thinking, “My God, the gates of Hell really have opened up.”

Surely you must remember Ted Cruz getting booed for not supporting Trump? His speech was said to be “classless” afterwards by Republican pundits. Here are a few paragraphs from The Guardian: written July 21 2016, referring to Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio. Rubio did a pre-recorded campaign ad for Trump, totally forgetting that a few months earlier he had said Trump couldn’t be trusted with the nuclear codes.

Both senators remain keenly aware of the damage they risk inflicting upon their own image by aligning themselves too closely with Trump’s controversial brand of politics. But staring down the barrel at a fractured party, they have taken vastly different routes while picking up the pieces of their failed campaigns.

While Trump’s long-term impact on the party remains unknown, many within the top brass have acknowledged they are bracing for a potentially devastating loss to Clinton in November.

On Wednesday, Cruz crystallized his view that the conservative movement will come to judge those who staked their beliefs on their support for Trump. What will remain to be seen is whether he can deliver on his bet that he will come through to lead the party back to power in 2020, or whether his ambition died in Cleveland.

Interesting to read those words, knowing what we know now. Trump’s long term effect on the party still isn’t known, but it emphatically is not good. And beyond that, who cares about his effect on the GOP? It’s whether his lies about the stolen election can destroy democracy which is the salient question. Screw the GOP. Let’s save America and our way of life — which, paradoxically is what Trump touts as his slogan.

And now Cruz and Rubio and the rest of the party have their lips glued to Trump’s ass so tightly that even the jaws of life can’t separate them. And now we see that Ted Cruz doesn’t have the proverbial snowball’s chance in Hell to become the front runner of his party.

And finally, now we see the young talent, the best on the Republican bench, decide to throw in the towel. I can’t blame Congressman Gonzalez for leaving politics. He always struck me as a reasonable voice and his honesty was a breath of fresh air. There’s no room for that in today’s Republican party. It’s a reality TV freak fest, made in the image of its god. The worst elements in the GOP are running it. The inmates have taken over the asylum.