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At a time when America continues to trend further to the ideological right, former U.S. congressman Joe Walsh – an erstwhile Tea Partier and early supporter of Donald Trump is headed in the opposite direction.
Walsh joined the Democrat party this week, bucking the national trend in a move some believe is a precursor to a campaign announcement.
“The stakes are simply too high to NOT become a Democrat,” Walsh wrote early Tuesday (June 3, 2025) on his Social Contract website, heralding what he described as the party’s commitment to “freedom, democracy and the rule of law.”
“Currently, only the Democratic Party is on the side of all three of these core American values,” Walsh wrote. “There isn’t a third party coming to the rescue any time soon. Right now, the Democratic Party is democracy’s lone defender and best hope.”
Democrats are struggling mightily, though. According to an analysis of county-level voting trends published Saturday (May 31, 2025) by The New York Times, Trump’s decisive 2024 victory – which saw him win the popular vote and every battleground state – was “not an outlier.”
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“It was the culmination of continuous gains by Republicans in much of the country each time he has run for president, a sea of red that amounts to a flashing warning sign for a Democratic Party out of power and hoping for a comeback,” reporter Shane Goldmacher noted.
According to Goldmacher, “Republicans are overwhelmingly making gains in working-class counties” while “the erosion of the Democratic base is accelerating.”
Walsh is under no illusion as to the challenge his new party is facing, saying “we’re gonna need a HUGE tent to defeat this Republican Party.”
“To defeat my former party and defend democracy, we must do something different,” he wrote. “We must assemble a broad coalition of moderates, progressives, and, yes, even conservatives.”
“To save our country, Democrats must connect with these ‘common sense, tolerant, get shit done’ voters in the middle,” he said. “That’s where I’ve been these past seven years.”
While saying he has gained a “greater understanding and appreciation for LGBTQ issues, structural racism, the need for empathetic immigration reform, the dangers of climate change, and the role government must play to help care for the neediest and most vulnerable among us,” Walsh insists he is “still the same passionate TEA partier who went to Congress in 2010 to fight against our out-of-control debt and fight for a more efficient government.”
“I’m still a border hawk, an unabashed gun rights advocate, and an unyielding defender of free speech,” he wrote.
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RELATED | DEMS’ DILEMMA
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Walsh, 63, of North Barrington, Illinois represented his native state’s eighth congressional district from 2011-2013. Upon leaving congress, he launched a Chicago-based radio show and mounted an ill-fated bid against Trump in the 2020 presidential election. He left the GOP following his failed presidential bid and became an independent.
Why should South Carolinians care about Walsh’s decision to join the Democratic Party? Because according to our sources, the self-described former “divisive political asshole” is coming to live in the Palmetto State. Walsh is reportedly planning a move to Aiken, S.C., and sources familiar with his thinking say he is mulling entreaties from within his new party to run against über-woke pediatrician Annie Andrews in the Democrat primary for the U.S. Senate.
Andrews announced her intention to challenge veteran incumbent Lindsey Graham last week, news which was wildly embraced by the Palmetto State’s left-of-center mainstream media but greeted with skepticism by party elites.
Andrews unsuccessfully challenged Nancy Mace for the Palmetto State’s first congressional district in 2022. Despite raising more than $2 million for her candidacy – and having millions more dumped in via political action committees – Andrews was thrashed by Mace, who received 56.4% of the vote compared to her 42.5%.
That’s a curb-stomping, people… and it came in a district held by a Democrat from 2019-2021.
As FITSNews has frequently pointed out, no Democrat has won a top-of-the-ticket statewide race in the Palmetto State this millennium. The last to do it? The late Fritz Hollings, who beat centrist GOP congressman Bob Inglis in 1998 to win his final term in the U.S. Senate.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR…
Will Folks is the founding editor of the news outlet you are currently reading. Prior to founding FITSNews, he served as press secretary to the governor of South Carolina. He lives in the Midlands region of the state with his wife and eight children.
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8 comments
Joe Walsh = carpet bagger? The douche bag has changed his stance on every core belief he ever espoused – the Dems can have him, not that they need another one like him.
It’s always entertaining to see what a Trump Cult member you have become. All the things you said Trump would not do, he has done and more, including hooded men in a van grabbing women off the street and dumping them in a concentration camp, handcuffing 12 year old girls, jack-booted thugs breaking down the doors of US Citizens and legal residents, rounding up hispanics and placing them in concentration camps, destroying NATO, abandoning our allies, supporting Russia over our allies, taking bribes left and right; and generally ignoring the Constitution. But hey MAGA!
You’ve obviously confused me with someone else. For one thing, I’ve never said a word about “…jack booted thugs…” (nor have there been any jack-booted thugs, the MSM has made much of ICE agents using neck gaiter masks to hide their identity, completely ignoring that it is almost universally global that police undercover agents attempt to hide their identity with neck gaiters and “shooters glasses”. They do it mostly to protect themselves from doxing by people of the liberal bent.)
Haven’t seen the reports of handcuffing 12-year-old girls yet – you sure that wasn’t Biden?
For the record, “jack boots” are actually cavalry boots and haven’t been worn much since the 1700-1800s. What Hitler’s “jack booted thugs” wore were “Marschstiefel” – loosely translated “marching boots”. The only “jack booted thugs” still wearing “jack boots” are the Kings Household Guard in Great Britian and the Russian army – they call theirs’ sapogi (boots). Door kickers in the US tend to wear tennis shoe-based Nikes, Danners or Garmonts (and Bates if they’re cheap)
Didn’t vote for Trump this time or the last however, he’s doing pretty much exactly what he said he’d do.
NATO is still standing (and will be). Israel is still being supported (though you would probably prefer they weren’t). Not sure what “allies” you’re suggesting he’s abandoned though he is insisting our allies help to carry some of the load. The concentration camps were built by Obama in case you’ve forgotten, and which is it that you want “concentrated” or “deported”? If you don’t want them “concentrated” then maybe you could write some of the liberal judges holding up the inevitable deportation – no, you wouldn’t want that either would you…
Hyperbolic much?
Does he still play with The Eagles?
This isn’t New York. It’s hard to imagine South Carolinians electing someone that moves in just in time to run for office. I don’t know about a Democratic primary, but the chances of a carpet bagger winning a statewide election seem slim.
You have to be joking. If you look up Yankee Carpetbagger in the dictionary, they would have a picture of Donald Trump. He is the ultimate carpetbagger.
“Andrews was thrashed by Mace, who received 56.4% of the vote compared to her 42.5%.
That’s a curb-stomping, people… and it came in a district held by a Democrat from 2019-2021.”
What Will leaves out is the redistricting that stacked (see what I did there?) Mace’s odds of winning.
The entertaining side of that has been watching her grow MTG-level batshit crazy to pander to her new base.
Exactly. A significant portion of the “move to the right” is based on partisan gerrymandering. In South Carolina the Republicans have freely admitted to that in legal filings. It is not the license to act like a complete nutjob the right-wing crazies think it is.
But exposing that would require reporting, and that will not be found here…