Former George W. Bush campaign strategist Matthew Dowd said Tuesday on MSNBC’s “Deadline” that the January 6 Capitol riot revealed that America was “not as great as we thought we were” and “the Republican Party is dangerous.”
Dowd said, “All of those people that were like, let’s get back to normal, like whether it is the pre-pandemic or pre-Donald Trump, let’s get back to normal. I don’t want to get back to normal. Back to normal was still a country that still needed a whole bunch of work, and this moment in time, extending it over five years but especially on January 6th, is a very purposeful moment for us all because it shows us who we are as a country. We’re not as great as we thought we were. We don’t have leaders of integrity like we thought we did. I have come on transition on the Republican. As you know, I left the Republican Party 14 years ago. I always thought, okay, it is a party that may not have integrity, I disagree with them on a number of issues, but I have now come to the point in time that the Republican Party is dangerous. It is dangerous using the methods that were put in place over the last 200 years to enhance their danger and to hurt our country.”
He added, “So I’m hoping this moment allows us to fundamentally look at all of the structures of our democracy and all of the things we’ve accumulated for 240 years that no longer fit where we are as a country, in a multi-cultural democracy. That’s what I hope we do. Going back to normal is not a good thing. We have to create something different. That’s what the Founding Fathers sort of put in place, that we would have that opportunity to create something new. We need to create something new and not go back to 1995 or 1985 because those may have been good times for some, but they weren’t good times for many.”
Follow Pam Key on Twitter @pamkeyNEN