PROFILES IN ANTI-TRUMP COURAGE!

Politico reports that the Republican Party wants to learn, grow, and change:

The Republican National Committee is launching a review of the party’s performance in the midterm election and bringing on a team of outside advisers to help guide strategy, as the GOP reckons with its disappointing performance in the election.

... Republicans say the council is designed to bring in new voices to the party and to provide guidance on matters like outreach to minorities and suburban female voters, groups that the GOP has often struggled to win over.

But the party doesn't want to learn, grow, and change too much:

The RNC is tapping nearly a dozen people to serve in what it’s calling a “Republican Party Advisory Council” – a group that includes former Donald Trump White House adviser Kellyanne Conway, evangelical leader Tony Perkins and a pair of Senate candidates who ran this year.

Kellyanne! Well, so much for any possibility that this group will say Donald Trump is one of the party's major problems.

And this list of members isn't encouraging on that subject either:

The list of members includes Alabama Sen.-elect Katie Britt, Texas Rep.-elect Monica De La Cruz and Rep.-elect John James, a Black Republican who hails from McDaniel’s home state of Michigan.

The panel will also include former Arizona Senate candidate Blake Masters....

Masters, of course, is the Trump-endorsed sociopath who lost the Arizona Senate race this month. Monica De La Cruz won her House race with Trump's endorsement.

And as for Britt and James, they're two profiles in courage. First, here's what Wikipedia has to say about James and Trump (links deleted):

James supported Ted Cruz in the 2016 Republican Party presidential primaries. He later became a Trump supporter, and tweeted in 2018 that, if elected to the Senate, he would back Trump "2,000%." During his 2020 campaign, James accepted Trump's endorsement and campaigned alongside him. James has not been publicly critical of Trump or his actions. During a meeting with Black faith leaders, James was asked whether he disagreed with Trump on anything. James said, "Everything from cutting Great Lakes funding to 'shithole countries' to speaking ill of the dead. I mean, where do you want to start?" In a leaked audio recording of a meeting with African American leaders in Michigan, James was asked why he hadn't publicly criticized Trump. He said he thought it was better to be silent in public in order to gain access to Trump. James said, "Donald Trump doesn't need less Black folks around him, he needs more", and that his goal was "achieving equity and equality for our people, not standing up on Twitter and condemning folks."

Brave Sir John!

As for Britt, she and her husband, ex-NFL player Wesley Britt, demonstrated a similar level of courage when some anti-Trump items were unearthed from Wesley's Twitter feed during the primary campaign:

... the husband of one of Alabama’s leading Senate candidates disavowed, in the strongest terms, the fact that he had “liked” some potentially damaging tweets.

He even implied that someone else must have done the liking of those tweets—possibly at the behest of the “anti-Trump Big Tech backers” of his wife’s opponents....

... a tweet Wesley Britt liked from Sept. 2016 that said “we just watched a man meltdown on live TV” during the Trump-Clinton presidential debate isn’t great for his wife’s political prospects.

Neither is the one Wesley liked in Aug. 2020 that blamed “Trump’s America” for Kyle Rittenhouse’s violence in Kenosha, Wisconsin.

... in May 2021, when the news broke that Katie was about to enter the Senate race, Donald Trump Jr. called Katie Britt “the Alabama Liz Cheney”—meant disparagingly—and Britt liked a tweet with the defensive response: “Stay out of Alabama politics. Katie Boyd Britt is no Liz Cheney. Your dad was a great president but he is not anymore.”

Similarly, in July 2021, President Trump put out a statement saying that Katie Britt was “not in any way qualified and is certainly not what our country needs,” and Katie Britt responded with a video post, saying she “wouldn’t run to somebody else for cover and have someone else fight for me.”

Wesley Britt liked a response to his wife’s statement that said, in a tone meant to reassure Katie, “You knew his idiot ass would chime in at some point.....don’t sweat it.”

But rather than ignore the story, or try to contextualize his thoughts—or even just point out the mildness of these Twitter interactions—Wesley Britt responded by implying he had been a victim of some kind of cyber attack.

“This is an absolute lie—I never liked those tweets,” Wesley Britt said in his statement to 1819 News, which reported the existence of these likes. “Just like Big Tech maliciously and wrongly banned President Trump and helped rig the election against him, I have no doubt that the anti-Trump Big Tech backers of Mike Durant will falsify anything to help him win.”

Wesley Britt went on to insist he had always been a major Trump supporter, going back to his days as a player on the New England Patriots, when he “enjoyed visiting with him in the Patriots locker room.”

Defend my wife against attack by Donald Trump and his son? I would never do that! If it seemed as if I defended my wife, some evil globalist must be responsible!

So if the evidence amassed by this advisory council suggests that Trump is a reason it's difficult to "bring in new voices to the party" and do "outreach to minorities and suburban female voters," I'm sure these folks will fearlessly say so. Their previous courage makes that obvious.