Trump critic Amash quits Republican Party, slams US political system

US Representative Justin Amash, the first Republican in Congress to support the impeachment of President Donald Trump, has quit the Republican Party, while blasting the US political system for placing party loyalty over principle.

According to Press TV, Amash, a member of the US House of Representatives from Michigan, said Thursday he has become disenchanted with a political system that is “trapped in a partisan death spiral.”

“The two-party system has evolved into an existential threat to American principles and institutions,” he wrote in a Washington Post opinion piece published on the US Independence Day holiday on July 4.

“Instead of acting as an independent branch of government and serving as a check on the executive branch, congressional leaders of both parties expect the House and Senate to act in obedience or opposition to the president and their colleagues on a partisan basis,” Amash wrote.

Amash has indicated he may run as a libertarian candidate against Trump in the 2020 presidential election.

A member of the lower chamber of Congress since 2011, the 39-year-old Amash made some high-profile decisions in recent months that indicated his growing disdain for Trump and subsequent drift from the party.

In May, the congressman drew a barrage of criticism from fellow Republicans after he laid out a case for Trump’s impeachment.

Amash said that month that US Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s report on Russian meddling during the 2016 US presidential election showed that Trump had obstructed justice, drawing the president’s fury.

Trump quickly returned fire by calling Amash a “lightweight” and a “loser.”

Amash’s comments on the Mueller report echoed the conclusions of many members of the Democratic Party, but Democrats are divided about impeachment. Most Republicans are still standing by Trump.

Trump welcomed Amash’s departure from the GOP with an acrimonious personal attack on social media. “Great news for the Republican Party as one of the dumbest & most disloyal men in Congress is ‘quitting’ the Party,” he wrote on Twitter.

In his opinion piece in the Washington Post, Amash said he believed that most Americans are not strictly partisan and do not feel well represented by either party.

In February, he became the only Republican lawmaker to co-sponsor a resolution in the House of Representatives to reject Trump’s declaration of an emergency at the US-Mexico border to build a wall there, in a stinging reprimand to the president.

ME