Laura Field: “Bannon, Gorka, and Miller are the very sort of men who support Donald Trump Jr., and the very sort of men whom he supports. And like it or not, they are the face of today’s conservatism and today’s Republican party. Earlier this month, emails were leaked that definitively proved Stephen Miller’s white supremacy, and not a single Republican member of Congress has joined the call for his resignation. As Jeet Heer put it back in August, Stephen Miller’s Republicanism is perfectly mainstream.”

“And so, while my first thought after the Trump Jr. protest was to question the journalism—Why are they calling these guys mainstream?—it’s the reality that’s off, not the writers.”

“I would like to think there’s a coalition of the decent out there who are just horrified by watching Donald Trump, by watching what he’s doing, but also what he’s doing to us. I would love to see the emergence of a coalition that would set aside ideological differences, at least temporarily, to deal with the current emergency.”

— Conservative commentator Charlie Sykes, quoted by The Progressive.

Max Boot: “Republicans have turned their back on conservative principles to become a cult of personality for an aspiring authoritarian. All voters with a conscience should now turn their back on the Republican Party. For aiding and abetting the president’s egregious abuses of power, the Republican Party deserves to be destroyed from top to bottom. We need a center-right party in this country. What we have instead is a party with no fixed principles that is willing to do anything — no matter how vile — to serve its maximum leader, a.k.a. ‘the chosen one.'”

Dallas Morning News: “In a bizarre political blunder, a document laying out the Republican Party of Texas’s election strategy for the 2020 elections has ended up in the hands of Texas Democrats. Attacking Democratic candidates through websites and mitigating ‘the polarizing nature’ of President Trump are part of the plan.”

The Republican National Committee is sending mailers to some Oregon voters that mimic the look of a U.S. Census form and solicit donations for President Trump’s re-election, the AP reports.

“With Donald Trump out of the way, you’re going to see a number of my Republican colleagues have an epiphany. Mark my words. Mark my words.”

— Joe Biden, quoted by Bloomberg.

Tim Alberta: “The administration, working in concert with its allies on Capitol Hill, has been hard at work identifying potential turncoats in the party and monitoring their activities to catch any sign of slippage. Believing that a unified party-line vote is needed in the House to prevent any narrative of Republicans abandoning Trump when action moves to the Senate, the president’s allies are determined to stay one step ahead of any lawmaker who might be going soft, gaming out scenarios for who could desert and why.”

“It amounts to a preemptive game of political whodunit, with Trump’s enforcers seeking to solve a mystery of political betrayal before it occurs. Naturally, there is no bigger fan of this game than the president himself.”

CNN: “What once was a frequently repeated mantra — there was no quid pro quo — has now morphed into a multi-pronged and sometimes disjointed defense, with Republicans each taking the job into their own hands, hoping to fight back against the allegations raised daily with the release of new transcripts.”

“Republicans across the Capitol have resorted to attacking the firsthand knowledge of witnesses, muddying the waters with calls to name the whistleblower and even seeking to discredit the Trump administration’s ability to be organized enough to execute a scheme to use military aid in order to advance its own political agenda.”

“Republican concerns are mounting about President Trump as damaging information piles up regarding his dealings with Ukraine,” The Hill reports.

“The dam is not yet at the bursting point, but anxiety — fueled by the sense that more revelations could emerge at any moment — is rippling through the GOP.”

“More discord could burst into public view soon. There are tensions about the White House’s strategy, with the most fervent Trump allies favoring a hard-line approach and others expressing misgivings.”

Politico: “President Trump’s promise to headline the Republican Party of Florida’s annual fundraiser has given it a much-needed financial and emotional boost going into 2020, even as the news has laid bare divisions within the state party’s leadership.”

“The party’s scramble to land a Trump visit culminated in a political victory for Gov. Ron DeSantis on Tuesday and effectively left state GOP Chairman Joe Gruters with a title but no influence. The power play caps a monthslong effort by DeSantis to elbow the chairman out of power.”

Greg Mankiw, former economic adviser to President George W. Bush, writes that he’s no longer a Republican.

“First, the Republican Party has largely become the Party of Trump. Too many Republicans in Congress are willing, in the interest of protecting their jobs, to overlook Trump’s misdeeds (just as too many Democrats were for Clinton during his impeachment). I have no interest in associating myself with that behavior. Maybe someday, the party will return to having honorable leaders like Bush, McCain, and Romney. Until then, count me out.”

“Second, in Massachusetts, unenrolled voters can vote in either primary. The Democratic Party is at a crossroads, where it has to choose either a center-left candidate (Biden, Buttigieg, Klobuchar, Yang) or a far-left populist (Warren, Sanders) as their nominee for president. I intend to help them choose the former.”