More than 40 percent of those on the call backed the idea of a breakaway party, organizers said. A slightly larger plurality favored a faction within the GOP, similar to the Tea Party movement that emerged in the party more than a decade ago.
The discussions are ongoing, several people on the call said, and they are planning to hold more meetings in the weeks and months ahead. Taylor, who anonymously penned an op-ed in The New York Times and later wrote a book criticizing Trump and his administration, did not rule out the notion of starting a third party and described last week’s meeting as a “temperature-taking discussion” among its participants.
“Even if a lot of folks in the Republican Party still support Donald Trump, it’s clear that the brand has taken an enormous repetitional hit,” Taylor said. “We feel like there’s definitely an opportunity here to recapture folks who felt disaffected by the way 2020 went.”
