Ex-GOP chairman: The Republican Party traded Ronald Reagan for Donald Trump, so I quit I resigned as a county GOP chairman after Donald Trump surrendered to Vladimir Putin in Helsinki. My fellow Republicans have abandoned their principles.

Chris Gagin | Opinion contributor

My tweet last month was simple enough: “I remain a proud conservative and Republican, but I resigned today as Belmont County Ohio GOP Chairman. I did so as a matter of conscience, and my sense of duty.”

That was all I wrote. Little did I know 6.2 million people would view this otherwise innocuous tweet. Not Beyoncé-level worthy, admittedly. But it was nonetheless remarkable that so many souls cared that a Republican county chairman, from a rural county in southeastern Ohio, had resigned to protest President Donald Trump’s capitulation in Helsinki. Interview requests from Fox, CNN, MSNBC, BBC and NPR poured in, as did quotes in The New York Times and The Washington Post. I was even mentioned in a Vanity Fair piece.

Amid the sudden notoriety, I quickly realized my resignation had become a political Rorschach test. To some, I was a patriot, standing tall in a true Profiles in Courage moment. To many others (i.e. most Republicans), I was traitor, a RINO or an obvious "Never Trumper." One older woman from Colorado left me a lovely voicemail message making certain I knew she thought I was a "p---y" for resigning. I found her comment oddly appropriate, given the president’s "locker-room" remarks on the now infamous "Access Hollywood" tape.

Republicans have lost their way

As the Twitter war raged, I saw my fellow Republicans, the heirs to Ronald Reagan’s conservative revolution, repudiating the very foundational and aspirational principles he used to truly "Make America Great Again" in the 1980s.

I looked in the distance and thought I saw Reagan’s ‘Shining City on a Hill,’ so I headed that way. It shone in the early morning, glowing in freedom’s unmistakable light. It was fortified, not with a wall, but with the strength that comes from moral clarity, the rule of law and the unwavering demand for truth. It prospered from its embrace of free markets, equal opportunity for all and the celebration of human aspiration.

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Sadly, today, President Trump would beat Ronald W. Reagan, head-to-head, in a Republican primary — and I’m not sure it would be close.

Republicans, do you care that Ronald Reagan would no longer be welcome in Donald Trump’s Republican Party? According to Gallup, 89% of my fellow Republicans are just fine with this reality, as they approve of the president's job performance. In the space of a generation, have 89% of Republicans really forgotten the powerful force for good that was the Reagan Revolution? Perhaps even more disheartening, this same 89% are content, if not intent, on driving away anyone not fully on board on the Trump Train, branding them traitors to America in the process.

Republicans need people like me to win

“Well,” as Reagan would begin, to my fellow Republicans, to those who hate me because of what I did, to those who consider me a RINO or worse, I say to you: You need me, and people like me. Proud conservatives. Proud Reagan Republicans. Even more so, President Trump and Congressional Republicans need people like me to survive both the midterms and in 2020. The electoral math is that simple.

Republicans must remember Reagan, even as 90% of us pledge unwavering support to President Trump. Remember that Reagan believed we secure a lasting peace through principled strength, not just our undeniable military might. Remember Reagan’s optimism that America’s future prosperity emanated from our willingness to lead the world in ideas, innovation and in the battle for human dignity.

Above all else, remember Reagan’s Shining City, and its true meaning. A meaning that, ironically, Richard Nixon helped define 44 years ago this month as he departed the White House in disgrace: “Always remember, others may hate you, but those who hate you don't win unless you hate them. And then you destroy yourself.” Or, has hate already won, and Reagan is lost?

Chris Gagin, a former district director and staff attorney for an Ohio congressman who became a Republican in 2013, is a director of Defending Democracy Together. Follow him on Twitter: @cgagin