To call Steve Schmidt a reformed Republican would be a vast understatement. Schmidt was an effective communication strategist for the Republican Party working on political campaigns, including those of President George W. Bush, California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, and Arizona Senator John McCain.
He made some mistakes along the way including pushing for the nomination of Sara Pailn as McCain’s running mate for his campaign 2008 against Barack Obama. It was a decision Schmidt came to regret.
From his new Substack blog, Steve writes:
…Senator McCain had asked me to accompany him to the private meeting with Sarah Palin where he would interview her to be the Vice Presidential nominee. I said that would be inappropriate. I told him that this was his first presidential decision. I told him that he alone had to make an assessment as to whether she was ready to take the Oath of Office on Day 1, and whether she was prepared to be President. He, and he alone, had to make that decision.
This was the biggest mistake I have ever made. The first opportunity I had to discuss a substantive policy issue with her did not take place until we were leaving the Minneapolis convention. It took less than three minutes for me to absorb the magnitude of the disaster. Should this have happened earlier, the selection of her would never have happened. This was a lapse in John’s judgment, not mine. My mistake was leaving John McCain alone in a room with her.
After Trump was elected in 2016 Schmidt became a powerful voice critical of not only Trump’s policies, actions and obvious corruption but of the entire Republican Party for supporting Trump.
In 2018 Steve Schmidt switched parties and became a registered Democrat.
Schmidt co-founded, along with other Republican operatives, the Lincoln Project which did some extremely good communications work calling out the excesses and insanities of the Trump Administration.
We came to look forward to new videos from the Lincoln Project. And there were a LOT of them.
Schmidt resigned from the Lincoln Project in early 2021 as the PAC was hit by internally generated scandals. But his criticism of both Republican policies and his own past associations continues.
Unlike the majority of Republicans who chose to remain under the influence of Trump’s blatant fascism and the corruption of what used to be Republican values, Schmidt remains vocal about calling these facts out.
Please. She is an absolutely degenerate liar. Pathological. Unfit. Unwell. She’s a quitter and a buffoon who has no business ever holding a position of public trust, ever. Not even as a crossing guard. Nothing. You are nuts also https://t.co/9JnIi00Bw4
— Steve Schmidt (@SteveSchmidtSES) May 8, 2022
His in-your-face responses to Republicans on Twitter and other platforms is appropriate, considering the blatant treason that the party endorses today.
Thus Steve Schmidt enters our hall of Fact Heroes. We hope his continuing actions and skewering of Republican twits and fools continues apace.
