Let’s stick with Trump and shed the RINO establishment.

Recently I’ve read some op-eds and columns about the transformation of the Republican Party due to our former and future President Donald Trump, and as a previous party official in two states, I’ve given the opinions of those opining a lot of serious thought. Some of the opinions therein can be dismissed as anti-Trump vitriol or whining, but I always try to evaluate what I read based on my real-world experience and my knowledge of politics and history.

I was neither a Trump supporter nor Trump hater when he first rode down that golden escalator at Trump Tower, mainly because I’ve become so jaded in regard to politicians of all stripes that I’m pretty hard to win over, and my loyalty to anyone running for office has to pass the muster of my “spider sense” and then be sustained by accomplishment. Most politicians are suspect but a few are total phonies which I’ve always been good at identifying when everyone around me is swooning over them.

Trump passed muster with me and subsequently earned my respect and support because he turned out to be an excellent president, and more importantly, a man created for our times.

As a lifelong conservative Republican, I became tired of holding my nose and supporting the Bushes, Doles, McCains and Romneys simply because they were the lesser of two evils, and wasting a vote on a third-party candidate was out of the question because it was nothing more than voting for the greater of two evils, a Democrat.

When 2016 rolled around, I and millions of others finally had a Republican candidate who was going to fix the things that needed fixing, and Trump was that guy. In a rare historical occurrence, President Trump was able to grab the Republican Party and force it to honor the concerns of its voters.

Of course, that didn’t sit well with the party establishment and the entrenched bureaucracy, so they immediately set out to regain their old power by derailing his presidency, and they, along with their Democratic friends did just that, giving us who I believe is the worst president in American history, Joe Biden, in 2020. It was like we were all out for a drive in the country in a new car with a full tank of gas, and someone in the back seat said, “let’s let Uncle Joe drive,” resulting in the car immediately going into a ditch.

I don’t need to go into Trump’s successes or Biden’s failures because they are a matter of record. All anyone needs to do is look at the economy, crime, the border, or foreign affairs now versus three years ago to see the difference, and unless you are a complete fool or liar, you have to admit that things were much better under Trump.

You rarely get a chance for a do-over in life, but America is being given that chance, because Trump is back and ready to move into the White House again. Of course, the Democrats are terrified of this, and are engaged in desperate measures to prevent it, such as weaponizing our legal system to try to put Trump in jail and by equally dishonest attempts to keep Trump off of the ballot in several states. The Republican establishment is lined up to prevent Trump from getting his party’s nomination also. That’s right, I wrote "his" party, because that is what the GOP (Grand Old Party) has become.

Trump is thrashing all of his Republican establishment opponents in the polls, but none of his critics have gotten the message. The most pathetic of the lot is Chris Christie of New Jersey, who has no real platform other than “I hate Trump.”

Christie attended the Florida Freedom Summit recently and was roundly booed by the audience. In response, Christie scolded the audience by saying “anger against the truth is reprehensible” and telling them, “Listen to my argument and if it is so bad, you can reject it out of hand.” Well, Chris, it seems that your argument has already fallen flat, since Trump is leading you by about 60 points, as in the Messenger/Harris poll.

Even better, Trump and our new Republican Party is leading Joe Biden by significant margins in crucial swing states Georgia, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Nevada and Arizona, according to a New York Times/Siena poll.

So, should Republicans stick with Trump’s party or revert back to the pre-Trump days? The answer is easy. Let’s stick with Trump and shed the RINO establishment.

Dwight Weidman is a resident of Greene Township and is a graduate of Shepherd University. He is retired from the United States Department of Defense, where his career included assignments In Europe, Asia, and Central America. He has been in leadership roles for the Republican Party in two states, most recently serving two terms as Chairman of the Franklin County Republican Party. He has been an Amateur Radio Operator since 1988, getting his first license in Germany, and is a past volunteer with both Navy and Army MARS, Military Auxiliary Radio Service, and is also an NRA-certified firearms instructor. In his spare time, he dabbles in genealogy and learning new languages.

This article originally appeared on The Herald-Mail: The Republican Party’s painful metamorphosis