'Loopy and reckless': Open letter urges GOP not to repeat 'unmitigated disaster' of past

An open letter in the Washington Post is urging Republicans to think of their own future — even if the country’s welfare fails to sway their actions.

Writer Matt Bai spelled out the effect the Jan. 6 insurrection and the 2020 election denial has had on the GOP and individual legislators' own jobs.

And he begged lawmakers to think about themselves when deciding to back Trump, even if nothing else matters to them.

“There’s a moment of choosing coming your way — another in a long line of pivotal moments revolving around Donald Trump. And this time, you really ought to make a different choice,” he wrote.

Bai predicted Democratic nominee Kamala Harris was going to eke out a slim victory in November — and that the chance of Trump and his followers accepting that were “somewhere between zero and negative one.”

And that’s when his pleading with GOP lawmakers to think about the impact on their own careers came in.

“That’s when you get to decide whether you’re willing to follow Trump so far down the dark path of fraud and insurrection that it’s almost inconceivable you could find your way back," he wrote.

“You really want to go through this again?

“I’m not going to sit here and appeal to your sense of patriotism, because we’ve all tried that already, and it’s like trying to reason an alcoholic out of drinking. I get that you’re afraid of Trump’s nationalist movement, afraid of primary challenges in your districts, still selling yourselves on the dubious idea that Trump represents the restoration of conservative values, rather than a grotesque perversion of them.

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"You’re not going to do the right thing because it’s right, and I’m not going keep pushing that particular boulder up a hill.

“Instead, I will appeal to your self-interest. Because if we’re clear-eyed and mercenary about this, you could be on the verge of a huge political opportunity — and clinging to Trump amid another constitutional crisis might be the only way to screw it up.”

He spelled out that the 2021 Capitol insurrection was seen by Americans outside of the MAGA movement as “loopy and reckless,” an opinion he said led to the Republican Party's poor showing in the midterms of 2022.

“You’d have the Senate right now,” he said. “Maybe you’d be fielding better candidates than Kari Lake and Mark Robinson.

“If we can’t agree that violent insurrection was an unmitigated disaster for your party, then surely we can say it has been a damaging distraction and a branding nightmare. I can’t imagine why any thinking Republican would sign up for another four years of that.”

And, he said, doing it all again would be even more disastrous for the party and individual Republicans in the long term.

“If Harris ekes out a win in November, she will come into office ill-defined and without any real mandate, other than not to be Trump. She will almost certainly misread that mandate, proposing expansive new programs that are easily caricatured and bound to be unpopular. (How do I know this? Because I’ve watched every Democratic president since Bill Clinton. It’s in the operating manual.)

“The 2026 midterms should be a walk in the park for you.”

But, he said, hanging their hats on fresh election denial would destroy that chance.

“No one’s expecting you to do what’s right,” he concluded.

“But maybe what’s smart isn’t out of the question.”