Why this Trump critic hosted a meeting about launching a new party for Republicans

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Evan McMullin says it's time for anti-Trump Republicans to move forward in a "unified" way — possibly by starting their own centre-right political party.

McMullin, who was chief policy director for the House Republican Conference and ran as an independent in the 2016 presidential election, co-hosted a video conference on Zoom last week with more than 120 Republicans about the possibility of striking out on their own — either as a faction of the Republican Party, or as a new party altogether.

According to Reuters, which first reported this story, the call included former officials in the Republican administrations of Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, George W. Bush and Trump, ex-Republican ambassadors and Republican strategists.

McMullin spoke to As It Happens host Carol Off on Friday about the Zoom call. Here is part of their conversation. 

What did all the people who joined in on this Zoom call last week ... have in common?

The most important thing they had in common, I think, were a commitment to American democracy, a commitment to founding ideals, namely that we are all created equal and free, and a commitment to truth.

Beyond that, those things also created additional common ground, which is the need for something new, whether it be inside the Republican Party or outside of it, either to change the course of the Republican Party or to compete with it directly.

There were various different opinions about what should be done. 

But this wouldn't be happening if it wasn't for Donald Trump, right? This is a retreat from the Trump Republicanism. Is that the case?

It is.

We had over 120 of the most well-known, principled Republican political and intellectual leaders in the country. These are people who are well-known to Americans and beyond our borders, in many cases.

Some of them never were on board with Trump, always opposed to him, always wanted a new direction for the party, at least under his leadership, if not before. 

But we also had people who had supported Trump in the past, actually, and that represents a significant development. We had people who had worked in his administration, people who had voted for him in the past.

Although they had taken different paths to this point, all were in the same place, committed to those things, and wanting a new direction. 

The direction is for you and others to develop another party, is that right?

We had that discussion.

Since our meeting last Friday, discussions have only intensified about what steps we'll take next.

We did a straw poll, and we asked everyone to indicate whether, amongst other things, they thought we should start a new party or a new faction.

Forty percent of the attendees thought we should start right away with the new party. To be clear, these are not political neophytes. These are people who have decades of experience, many of them leading political campaigns and parties, state and nationally, in America. 

But then 43 per cent thought that we should start with a faction. And among the faction people, they were exactly evenly divided between those who thought the faction should operate exclusively inside the GOP and those who thought it should be more independent. And what that means is that it would largely work inside the GOP [to] try to advance its own candidates through the Republican primaries in various offices. But they would also support viable independents and, when necessary, support unifying Democrats being challenged in general elections by extremist Republicans.

For you personally, what do you think of the idea of starting a new party?

My role in all of this ... is to take the different views and different opinions about what should happen and to help lead everyone forward in a unified way that can be as effective as possible.

I will say that I don't think it has to be one or the other. In fact, I think the most strategic approach, and the approach that may keep everyone together in this effort ... is something more in the middle where, you know, maybe we start a faction that operates independently in some ways of the Republican Party. But maybe in some states where starting a new party and gaining ballot access is relatively open and achievable ... maybe we do actually organize formally as a party.

I would say that the status quo is worse than being in the political wilderness.- Evan McMullin

Isn't this kind of backwards, I mean, sort of gathering everybody up to leave one person's influence in the party? Isn't it better to try and get that one person out? I mean, shouldn't Donald Trump be the one who's leaving, and not all of you?

Well, certainly that would be our preference, right? But I don't think it's fair to say that he is alone. I mean, most of the party supports him. Most of the party wants to continue with him in its leadership. And so, you know, that's the challenge.

So it's not just Trump, it's that he has a strong base of support in the party. It's getting smaller, but we still have some work to do. And whether we can do it inside or outside of the party is a question.

During the Trump years ... Republicans had control of the Senate. You had control of the White House. And now ... to split the party, isn't that basically a trip to the political wilderness?

I would say that the status quo is worse than being in the political wilderness.

The Republican Party has now become a destructive force in America, and it is better that it be in the wilderness for a cycle or two or three than that it continue on this track.

For heaven's sakes, the party just led a violent insurrection against the government to overturn an election so its president, a president of its party, could remain in office illegitimately. That is far worse for the country, far worse for the party, in the long term than being in the political wilderness.

I know a lot of people who care more about power than the country don't like that thought. ... But that's what needs to happen. And if we do that, if we are willing to do that, then all of the sudden we can compete for the votes of so many other Americans — Americans from a variety of different backgrounds, racially, ethnically, religiously. You know, we can better compete for the votes of women, for the votes of young people.

Written by Sheena Goodyear. Interview produced by Katie Geleff.