Smerconish Urges Retiring Republicans Like Corker, Flake, Charlie Dent to Run as Independents

RUSH EXCERPT:

SMERCONISH: "What an office-holder should do when they can’t be renominated, is an extraordinarily different question. Most retire. To me, no glory attaches to that. Some switch parties. Some stand, fight and lose in a landslide. I don’t see the point in that. All that proves is that their party doesn’t agree with them. Senator flake said this week, the bottom line is that if I were to run a campaign, that I could be proud of, and where I didn’t have to cozy up to the president and his positions or his behavior, I could not win a Republican primary. Well no doubt he’s right. Last week I saluted his Arizona colleague, John McCain, who in a speech that I attended in Philadelphia, called out those who support half-baked spurious nationalism. But it was not lost on me that even McCain only found his voice after his own re-election was secure. That he didn’t immediately go after candidate trump when the GOP presidential candidate besmirched his war service, was a sign that as McCain told Ryan lizza at the time he was worried about the crazies that trump had stirred up. The sway held by media provocateurs over closed primary voters has created a situation where the fringes have outsized influences in the primaries. But not in general elections. Which raises another option — imagine if a talent pool comprised of the likes of corker, flake, dent, and Democrats like Evan byah and Joe Lieberman and independents like Michael Bloomberg and Angus king would unite and fight as independents, the label that’s preferred by 45% of Americans? See together we can take this debate back from the angriest voices. It’s been more than a century since Theodore Roosevelt saluted those with the grit to get involved saying quote it’s not the critic who counts, not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood. Who strives valvaliantly, who errs and comes up short gand an again."