Conservative Iowa talk radio personality Steve Deace, who became a prominent endorser of Ted Cruz’s presidential run, has reacted to Donald Trump’s ascendance to presumptive GOP nominee by breaking up with the Republican Party, filing paperwork today to renounce his party registration.
On Facebook and on his radio program last night, Deace declared that the United States is like a “petulant brat” who is “crying out to be spanked” by God.
He declared on his radio program that “the Republican Party ended for me today.”
“I just will not belong to something that has zero interest in the things of God,” he said, “and it’s clear to me that this party does not. I will not belong to something that has, whose character has sunk so low that it could nominate a man like Donald Trump as its standard-bearer.”
To the members of the “Trump cult,” he said, “Congratulations, you won, here’s the keys to your lemon.”
He and his cohosts then compared leaving the Republican Party to breaking off a toxic relationship or watching a loved one die of a slow, painful disease.
“You know what’s funny about this, though?” Deace said. “I just feel like this huge burden has been lifted off of me. I feel like the dude who knows his girlfriend’s been cheating on him this whole time and has a drinking problem.”
Once you break off such a “toxic” relationship, he said, “that’s when you can care about that person again because you don’t feel like they’re betraying you now and you’re like, ‘No hard feelings, I shouldn’t have let it go this far, you really need counseling.’”
“I feel the least amount of hostility toward the Republican Party tonight than I have maybe in my broadcast career … and it comes, not coincidentally the night that I am no longer a Republican,” he declared.
“You’re describing,” his co-host Todd Erzen said, “how people feel at the end of a long, slow, painful slog that is a certain kind of death, that comes with a certain kind of disease. And you don’t want your loved one to go away, you’re remembering all the good times, you’re remembering the potential, whatever; when it finally comes, there’s peace.”
Deace continued to disparage “Trump’s campaign con,” labeling the presumptive GOP nominee’s message “Louis Farrakhan for white people.”
