‘Republican Party Did Have a Civil War and the Confederacy Won’: Matthew Dowd Calls Out GOP for Embracing Hatred of ‘Diverse America’

Former Bush-Cheney political strategist Matthew Dowd decried the state of the Republican party and said that former President Donald Trump and his supporters have effectively taken over the GOP by embracing a hatred of diversity that is reminiscent of the Confederacy.

Speaking with CNN host Kate Bolduan on OutFront Monday night, Dowd mocked Trump’s former U.S. Ambassador the United Nations, Nikki Haley, for repeatedly flip-flopping to try to straddle the establishment and populist factions within the party.

After the show played a supercut of recent Haley statements, where she all but pronounced him politically dead — saying he “let us down” and the party “can’t let that happened again — but then also defended him by hitting the “anti-Trump media,” falsely claiming she never thought he was “dangerous,” and blithely shrugging off his actions that led to the Capitol insurrection: “Give the man a break.”

“It’s incredibly, we ran against John Kerry and one of the things we ran against him on was being a flip flopper,” Dowd said. “But John Kerry looks like the mountain of stability compared what Nikki Haley has been doing. She shifts around more than Prius driving across the Mackinac Bridge in a 50-mile-per-hour wind. One thing I think we can say she is consistent about that I think this reveals is that she fits right in because it shows that her lack, complete lack of any sort of principles.”

“I’m wondering now looking at all of this in full view is this proof of Trump’s strength in the party that Haley somehow missed?” Bolduan asked.

“The Republican party created Donald Trump. Donald Trump didn’t create the Republican party today,” Down answered. “The reason why he became the Republican nominee is because that is who the Republican Party is. He enjoys 90% favorability rating among Republican voters. They like where he is positioned against what he — they think is something wrong in America.”

“What unites Trump voters in the base of the Republican Party today isn’t policy or a set of issues because they’re all divergent,” Dowd elaborated. “It used to be part of the Republican party is for fiscal responsibility and part of the Republican Party was for free trade and part of the Republican Party was for standing up for law and order, but what really unites them, Kate, is is complete hate of a diverse America and America as it exists today in the 21st century. That’s what unites them. I don’t think Republicans who are taking a stand in moments against Donald Trump recognize what the modern Republican Party fundamentally is. I said earlier today on Twitter the Republican Party did have a civil war and the Confederacy won. I don’t think they’ve come to terms with that.”

After urging Republicans to treat Trump as a “scourge” and “pariah,” Down acknowledged that is highly unlikely to happen.

“That’s not where the Republican Party is,” Dowd conceded. “They want him and seem to have moved on very quickly from the insurrection that happened on January 6th, which is amazing to me, where people died and they were trying to stop the vote in a manner very similar to 1860 and 1861, but the Republicans who think they’re principled don’t know the modern Republican Party.”

Watch the video above, via CNN.