A long list of Never Trump conservatives, from MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough to veteran columnist George Will to Michigan Rep. Justin Amash, have expressed their disdain for Donald Trump’s presidency by leaving the Republican Party — and on Monday, Bush-era economist Greg Mankiw announced that he has left as well.
Mankiw, who served as chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers under President George W. Bush, announced in an October 28 blog post that he had “switched my voter registration from Republican to unenrolled, a.k.a. independent.” While some former Republicans have joined the Libertarian Party — former New Mexico Gov. Gary Johnson, for example — or the Constitution Party, Mankiw now lacks a party affiliation. And Mankiw, in his post, offers two main reasons why he has departed the GOP.
“First,” Mankiw explains, “the Republican Party has largely become the party of Trump. Too many Republicans in Congress are willing, in the interest of protecting their jobs, to overlook Trump’s misdeeds — just as too many Democrats were for (President Bill) Clinton during his impeachment. I have no interest in associating myself with that behavior.”
View the complete October 29 article by Alex Henderson on the AlterNet website here.