Ex-GOP congresswoman says party is on the way to being ‘fringe’ within ‘three or four years’
Susan Molinari, a former Republican representative for New York, says that she no longer recognises the party she belongs to and predicts that the GOP as we know it may not be around in a few years.
In an appearance on The Sunday Show on MSNBC, Ms Molinari, who served three terms in Congress in the 1990s, blamed leadership for the path the party is currently on, citing the apparent failure to rein in freshman representative Marjorie Taylor Greene.
She told host Jonathan Capehart of her disappointment and concern, saying: “I think actually the Republican Party can become the fringe party, the party that we won't recognise in the next three or four years unless some aggressive leadership steps forward. I think it's that serious.”
Ms Molinari believes the problems in the party are not just the fault of one or two rogue individuals.
“It's not just Marjorie Taylor Greene,” she said. “It's serious. How [House Minority] Leader Kevin McCarthy deals with this will tell us a lot.”
“When we look at the GOP in Arizona, a GOP legislator who just introduced a piece of legislation saying they should be able to overturn electoral results by the legislature. Saying what happened in the Capitol was not really happening,” she continued. “When we look at what's happening in the South Carolina GOP wants to censure — it's not just Marjorie Taylor Greene, it's a disease flowing through the Republican Party.”
Ms Molinari has not yet given up on the GOP and sees hopeful signs for a possible future from stances taken by several prominent party members.
“I'm not going to leave the party yet because I want to stand up as long as Liz Cheney and Mitt Romney, Adam Kinzinger are being brave," she said.
“Me sitting in my living room feels like I owe them time to see that they can re-establish this Republican Party and back them up in any way that I can.”
However, she conceded that at the moment things do look bleak for the party she once knew: “I'm not sure, and I never thought I would say this, I'm not sure the Republican Party as we know it will be around in a few years.”
Ms Molinari gave a video address at the 2020 Democratic National Convention, becoming one of the first politicians from an opposing party to do so. She was a keynote speaker at the 1996 Republican National Convention.
After leaving Congress, Ms Molinari worked as a lobbyist on a number of issues and later became vice president for public policy at Google from 2012 to 2018.
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