Joe Walsh Says the 3 Words 'I Thought I'd Never Utter'

How much can life change in a decade? Ask former Republican congressman Joe Walsh. In 2016, the one-time Illinois representative wrote that he was voting for Donald Trump and "grabbing my musket" should Trump lose. He quickly changed his tune, so much so that in 2020 he attempted to challenge Trump for the nomination. Walsh left the GOP shortly thereafter and spent five years with no party affiliation, reports the Hill. That changed Tuesday, when Walsh announced in a Substack post that he has formally joined the Democratic Party. Select lines:

• "Three words I never thought I'd ever utter: I'm a Democrat."
• "This former Republican Congressman, former Republican candidate for President, this former TEA Party champion is formally joining the Democratic Party. The stakes are simply too high to NOT become a Democrat."

• "We've never been here before. Of course we've always fought about and debated policy—how best to pay for healthcare, whether taxes should be raised or cut, and how best to deal with immigration. But we've never before fought about actually remaining a democracy or abiding by the Constitution and the rule of law. Now we are."
• "Without freedom, democracy, and the rule of law, America ceases to be. And currently, only the Democratic Party is on the side of all three of these core American values. There isn't a third party coming to the rescue any time soon. Right now, the Democratic Party is democracy's lone defender and best hope.
• "Campaigning last year to defeat Trump, I would hear the same critique from working-class and middle-class voters every single day in every battleground state I was in: 'Yes, Joe, I know Trump is an a--hole, but Democrats are elites who look down on me and don't understand my life.' To save our country, Democrats must connect with these 'common sense, tolerant, get shit done' voters in the middle."
• "I used to be a conservative Republican. The Republican Party is no longer conservative, it's authoritarian. I'm still a conservative, so now I'm a conservative Democrat. And look, here's the thing. We're gonna need a HUGE tent to defeat this Republican Party. We're gonna need a Democratic tent big enough to hold both a conservative like Joe Walsh and a progressive like Alexandria Ocasio Cortez. I want to help build that big tent because I want to win, and...Trump's Republican Party must lose."

(Read his full post here.)