A Michigan Republican who voted for Donald Trump in the 2016 presidential election isn’t planning to back him in 2020 — and is looking to anyone or even anything as an alternative.
“I’ll vote for a tuna fish sandwich before I vote for Donald Trump again,” said Jack Spielman of Michigan, who shared his story of supporting Joe Biden as part of a campaign from the group Republican Voters Against Trump.
As CNN reported, Spielman is part of a small but vocal group of Republican voters who are aiming to help Biden defeat Trump. Spielman, a U.S. Army veteran, said he is disappointed with Trump’s performance on foreign policy and handling of the coronavirus pandemic. Spielman told CNN in an interview this week that he believes there will be a significant faction of Republicans turning on Trump this year.
“Just as what happened with the Reagan Democrats, now is the Republicans’ turn to become Republican Democrats, or Biden Republicans, to kind of return the favor, to say the nation needs us right now to get on a corrective course.”
The report noted that there are a number of different Republican groups opposing Trump’s re-election bid. One of the most prominent is the Lincoln Project , led by a number of high-profile and longtime Republicans, including lawyer George Conway, whose wife, Kellyanne, serves as a senior White House adviser.
As the Washington Examiner noted, Republican Voters Against Trump is a subset of the group Defending Democracy Together, which was started by a group of conservative and Republican leaders to speak out on issues including free trade, protecting the rule of law, and extending legal immigration.
Though many of these groups have been vocal in opposition to Trump and has highly publicized their efforts — including the Lincoln Project, which has published a number of viral videos mocking Trump — polls show that the majority of Republican voters still back the president, to the tune of 90 percent or greater in most national polling.
But there could be signs that the support is starting to break. As Newsweek noted in a report last month, polls taken in the wake of the protests following the killing of George Floyd and the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic that has seen the United States lead the world in cases have shown Republican support dropping. Polling from Rasmussen Reports showed that Trump’s support among Republican voters dropped during the month of June, falling 4 percentage points to 80 percent.
