Why it matters that a sitting congressman is abandoning the GOP

In a typical session of Congress, elected lawmakers do not switch or abandon their political parties. But as is true in so many ways, we're living in strange times.

In an interview with CNN, Mitchell said last week was the breaking point: nearly two-thirds of the House Republican conference signed their names to an anti-democracy lawsuit, asking the Supreme Court to reward Trump with power he did not earn.

"As I saw that amicus brief, as well as the discussions over the weekend in the national media, it became clear to me that I could no longer be associated with the Republican Party," the Michigan congressman explained. He added, "I've had enough."

Mitchell is the third lawmaker to change his party affiliation over the last year and a half, following Michigan's Justin Amash, who left the GOP in July 2019, and New Jersey's Jeff Van Drew, who joined the GOP exactly one year ago this week.

By all accounts, yesterday's announcement was far more unexpected than the other two. While there are occasional rumors about assorted members and their commitments to their parties, Paul Mitchell represents Michigan's most Republican congressional district, which he's served by voting with Trump more than 95% of the time.

If Capitol Hill observers were drawing up a list of GOP members likely to jump ship and disassociate themselves with Republican politics, Mitchell isn't one of the names that would likely come up. And yet, here we are.

The practical impact of the announcement, however, is effectively non-existent: Mitchell didn't run for re-election, and his last day as a federal lawmaker is just a few weeks away. He'll still vote on some bills -- this time, without any party pressure -- but in terms of day-to-day activities, the biggest change for Mitchell is that he won't be invited to any House GOP conference meetings between now and the last day of this Congress.

The news nevertheless struck me as notable, in large part because there should be some consequences for what's transpired in Republican politics over the last several weeks.

The New York Times published a striking report over the weekend, noting that the U.S. Supreme Court's refusal to give Trump illegitimate power was "a blunt rebuke to Republican leaders in Congress and the states who were willing to damage American democracy by embracing a partisan power grab over a free and fair election."

The article added, "Republican leaders now stand for a new notion: that the final decisions of voters can be challenged without a basis in fact if the results are not to the liking of the losing side."

The same day, the Associated Press reported, "Many lawmakers in one of the nation's two major political parties are either willing to back efforts to overturn a free and fair election or unwilling to speak out against such a campaign."

As the dust starts to settle on this ugly drama, and some GOP officials grudgingly acknowledge the election results they do not like, many Republicans will probably shrug their shoulders and say, "Well, we gave it our best shot. Time to move on."

But that's far too clean a resolution. Much of the Republican Party decided the will of the American people can and should be subverted. Votes the GOP disagreed with should be discarded. Republicans, in breathtaking terms, decided that democracy need not be a bedrock of the United States' system anymore.

This should leave a stain on the party that lingers, and the resignation of a sitting member of Congress -- a conservative lawmaker who said he's "had enough" -- is a small part of what deserves to be a much larger rebuke.