Here’s former Republican Majority Leader McConnell on the floor of the Senate proclaiming, “The mob was fed lies. They were provoked by the president and other powerful people.”

And then comes Republican House leader Kevin McCarthy on the House floor: “The president bears responsibility for Wednesday’s attack on Congress by mob rioters.” Then he suggested censure of Trump instead of a second impeachment.

The Democrats never turn on their own. For decades they praised as  “the lion of the Senate” a drunk who abandoned a young woman to drown at the bottom of a pond. How to fathom these Quisling moves by GOP “leaders” in the last few days of Trump when everyone heard the president admonish well over a half million supporters to go “peaceably and patriotically” to the Capitol “to make your voices heard” exactly as the First Amendment says? 

Deserting their party’s president and bloodying him with false accusations, a president who won the loyalty of 90 plus percent of their party, who is justly celebrated for his achievements by over 74 million who voted for him, who has won more Black and Hispanic votes than any Republican president in history,  isn’t only disloyal. It’s staggeringly stupid.

Because predictably, now many Republicans, independents, and even Democrats who spent the summer and fall rocking the nation with joyful MAGA car parades and rallies, Trump flags flying and horns blaring (and that doesn’t count the hundreds of thousands reveling at official Trump rallies) are walking away from the GOP.  The traitors at the top, including Wyoming Rep. Liz Cheney, have managed by their treachery to deflate a boisterous crop of newly-minted citizen activists who have never before been involved in politics. Trump turned them into the bold new vanguard of Republicans who elected 14-plus new Republicans, mostly women, to the House in the 2020 elections.  And now the #NeverTrumpers who have been revealed as collaborators with the Trump-hating Democrats have turned many of them into doubters and dropouts.             

So what do we do?

We don’t leave the party, we take it over by wielding our voting power. We primary the RINO Trump-trashers  and oust them from the party. We lead the grassroots takeover of the Republican Party. It’s already happening.  Liz Cheney has a strong challenger and she may decide not to run again, given the uproar over her impeachment vote. Even now grassroots stalwarts like Randy Corporon, activist chair of Colorado’s largest Tea Party and recently elected state Republican Committeeman, are moving into powerful national party positions. 

We fight as Republicans, not unaffiliateds, because the Republican Party has the decades-strong structure and the organizational reach to win elections against the Democrats. The unaffiliated have none. Third parties, even a Trump third party, never have a chance but always split the vote.

Taking power starts locally and builds from the ground up. In your neighborhood, the party is composed of your neighbors. First, sign up at your county’s GOP website and start attending meetings. Find out who your precinct leader is.  If your precinct lacks a leader, volunteer for the job. Get your MAGA friends to join the party and get yourselves elected into leadership and policy committees. You’ll be able to help guide your local party’s direction and make the America First agenda work for your community. As a party official you’ll be able to vote in the party’s internal primaries (prior to the general primaries) to select the best Republican candidates to carry the conservative message in your local and state offices such as  district attorney, county commissioner, and the House and Senate in your statehouse.       

We must run for school board to protect our kids from the onslaught of leftist propaganda teaching them to be ashamed, not proud, of our America. We must go in numbers as parents and grandparents to school board meetings and fight the evil curriculum created by the New York Times and the America-last haters that slavery, not freedom, is the foundational idea of our nation. We must fight the “sex ed” classes sold by Planned Parenthood to school districts nationwide that tell our kids to question their gender “birth assignment” -- that they could well be a girl trapped in a boy’s body or the other way around.        

In whatever state you live (but especially Arizona, Nevada, Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, or Wisconsin) write, call, and email your state legislators to pass laws that ensure fair elections. Also insist that your county party pressure state lawmakers to make elections honest. Election laws must enforce voter picture ID, signature verification of mail and in-person ballots, scrubbing the voter rolls of people who have left the state or the planet, and even more election safeguards.  Lawmakers do listen to constituents because they want to get re-elected.  We must make sure there’s never another stolen election because if election corruption is not stopped, there’s no actual reason to hold another one.     

We must be relentless, just like the Democrats. We come from strength because we know President Trump’s America First trade deals, economic strategies and tax cuts have brought Americans, including minority Americans, more prosperity, higher incomes, and better job opportunities than ever before. His international policies have made the world a more peaceful place than at any time in recent memory.

The election proved we conservative Trump loyalists are the majority of Republicans, so we have an excellent start on taking over the party. Actually, we already dominate because President Trump’s popularity is holding and rising even after the January 6 riot.  A January 23-25 survey found 81% of Republican voters hold positive views of Trump, including 54 percent who do so strongly. 

Despite the RINOS, the majority base of the party is loyal to the MAGA agenda, a durable package of timeless ideas that will always make our nation great and our people prosperous. Republican candidates that can articulate these ideas and put them into action -- lower taxes, robust capitalism, supporting business with less regulation, educational choice, energy independence, legal immigration, religious rights, gun rights, freedom of speech -- will win. We can stampede the RINOS into the sunset. But we must get off our couches and stop listening to the depressing lies from the leftstream media about the demise of the Republican Party. Let’s get to work. Let’s roll.

Joy Overbeck is a Colorado journalist who has written for American Thinker, Townhall, the Washington Times, The Daily Caller, The Federalist, and others. Follow her (temporarily)  on Twit @joyoverbeck1