Republican dissent.

Donald Trump sent an all-cap message to Fox:
     GET RID OF KARL ROVE!!!”

RINOs are the swing vote that will determine the 2024 election. 

A Republican is either with Trump or a RINO, a Republican in Name Only. Liz Cheney, Mitt Romney, George W. Bush, Michael Pence, Chris Christie, Nikki Haley, and many of Trump's former top appointees are RINOs. Trump could try to fold Trump-skeptical Republicans back into his coalition. He could say nice things about Nikki Haley and her voters. Trump could praise NATO. He could pull back from his statement telling Putin to take. Trump could say that his keeping documents was a big misunderstanding and of course he intended to return them. Trump could say the January 6 attack on the Capitol was unintended and that bad apples took over. He isn't doing any of that.

Karl Rove is a Republican strategist. He is a regular commentator on Fox. I don't think that Rove persuades Republicans, but he reflects the thinking of some of them. It wasn't just January 6. It is that Trump persists in celebrating January 6. That forces the hands of Republican. Being a Republican means one endorses -- or at least tolerates -- overthrowing an election with an attack on the Capitol.

Rove's two-minute rant starts at minute 2:55

Here is the text of what he said:

For the worst part, they [the Trump campaign] take January 6th and go hard at it. And they would say he wants to pardon those people who attacked our Capitol. 

I worked in that building as a young man. To me the Congress of the United States is one of the great examples of the strength of our democracy and a jewel of the Constitution. And what those people did when they violently attacked the Capitol in order to stop the Constitutionally mandated meeting of the Congress to accept the results of the electoral college is a stain on our history and every one of those sons of ------ who did that we ought to find them, try 'em, and send them to jail.  

One of the critical mistakes made in this campaign is that Donald Trump has now said 'I'm going to pardon those people because they're hostages.' No they're not. They are thugs. They are people -- some of them had automatic weapons in a hotel in Virginia hoping to be called up. We had people saying 'Where is Nancy Pelosi.' We had people who are taking desks, sitting at the desk of the Speaker of the House and attempting to find people in order to bring them to justice, yelling at the police saying 'kill them, kill them all.'  

And so why Trump has done this is beyond me. If he had said, 'You know what. I trust our jury system, I trust our law enforcement. Anyone who assaulted the Capitol ought to be -- he said it once or twice -- but now he's got, he's appearing in a video with people who assaulted police officers with an attempt to take the Capitol by force. So, you know, look,  I'm a Republican. I don't want to have a Democrat to be president. I want a Republican president.  But we're facing as a country a decision -- everyone has to make it --  as to what kind of leadership we're going to have. And to me it is a mistake on the part of the Trump campaign to allow the president's impulses to identify himself with people who assaulted the Capitol rather than people who stand for law and order.

Rove did not say he was going to vote for Biden and I don't expect him to do so. He's a Republican. That would be too much. But I predict he will announce at some point he won't vote for Trump either.

I predict as the campaign progresses that that will be the default position for Trump skeptical Republicans. If Trump loses in battleground states, I predict it will be the undervote that defeats him. Trump asks too much and goes too far.