GOP strategist: As the GOP gets smaller, it’s becoming ‘crazier’

GOP strategist and MSNBC contributor Steve Schmidt said Friday that the Republican Party is shrinking and becoming “crazier” as it does, linking the decline to the party’s takeover by President Trump.

Schmidt, who ran Sen. John McCain’s (R-Ariz.) presidential campaign in 2008, told “Real Time with Bill Maher” that the Republican Party faces a major threat from a younger generation that largely identifies with Democrats.

“As it shrinks, it gets smaller; just like the California Republican Party has, it will become crazier,” Schmidt said, after noting that the GOP had become a “third party” in the state.

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Schmidt added that there were likely many other Republicans who would denounce the party and vote for Democrats under a Trump presidency, as Schmidt announced he would do in June.

“I think it’s a very significant number, and I think you’re going to start seeing college-educated Republican women in these swing districts deliver the blue wave for the Democrats,” he said.

Schmidt said in June that he would begin voting for Democrats until GOP lawmakers found their independence from Trump, whom Schmidt has frequently criticized.

“29 years and nine months ago I registered to vote and became a member of the Republican Party which was founded in 1854 to oppose slavery and stand for the dignity of human life,” Schmidt tweeted at the time. 

“Today I renounce my membership in the Republican Party. It is fully the party of Trump,” he added.

Schmidt’s statement came amid the Trump administration’s family separation crisis, during which thousands of children were forcibly separated from their families due to Trump’s “zero tolerance” immigration policy. Trump later halted the separations via executive order, but faced criticism from lawmakers in both parties.