LAKE HARTSMELLIN, FLORIDA — In his sleepy Florida hometown, Republican Strategist Mick Axton fires off dozens of tweets a day, all attacking the current president, who belongs to the Republican Party as well. Axton is a self-described “Forever Never Trumper,” and he has helped form a new group of anti-Trump Republicans that is spending lavishly on ads attacking the president’s strongest congressional allies. This is the second election cycle he’s choosing to work against his own party, however in the past Axton has worked as a surrogate for every other Republican candidate he could, including in 2008 when he proudly endorsed former half-term Alaskan Governor Sarah Palin as Vice President, when she was on the other side of the late Sen. John McCain’s losing ticket.

That year, McCain lost to Senator Barack Obama (D-Kenya), setting up an eight year run in the Oval Office. All told, Axton has only worked with one candidate who went on to win the popular vote — George W. Bush’s 2004 re-election campaign. Other than that, though, Axton has consistently backed candidates who not only couldn’t win in the Electoral College vote count, but who were not as popular as his opponents’ candidates. Despite his track record for backing losers, Axton believes he and conservatives like Jennifer Rubin and Bill Kristol should be handed the reins of the Democratic Party, or at the very least should listened to intently, as they give advice to the Dems on who they should nominate to take on the re-election bid of President Donald Trump.

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“I feel like I really have my finger on the pulse of the country; I know who they really want to vote for,” Axton told WKKK Newsradio host Chip Chatterly this weekend, “even if I’ve only ever backed one truly winning candidate. What can I say? I’m dialed-into what the average American wants, even if they don’t know that they want it. I do know they want to vote for the people I support, even if the actual votes cast don’t show that in the slightest. Trust me.”

Axton was asked if he thinks it’s right to criticize him for backing people like Sarah Palin and then turning around and mocking Democrats for putting Vermont Senator and self-described Democratic Socialist Bernie Sanders in the frontrunner position.

“But isn’t Sarah Palin objectively stupider than Sanders,” Chatterly asked.

Axton laughed.

“Of course, most definitely she is,” Axton confirmed.

“So,” Chatterly followed-up, “were you just kidding when you endorsed her to be Vice President? I mean, if McCain had been elected, had a heart attack, and died, she’d have been the president. She would have been in the Oval Office, making decisions presidents make. You were truly, unironically backing that scenario in 2008?”

“Absolutely, positively,” Axton answered. “The McCain/Palin ticket was the first time I had worked with a non-Bush campaign. I really thought we had a winner in Senator McCain, and yes, I completely believed Sarah Palin should be put in the position where she was just a brain hemorrhage away from the nuclear codes. But at least she wasn’t someone who thought rich people were doing fine by themselves. At least she didn’t think basic healthcare is a human right, like some kind of bleeding heart liberal.”

Axton admitted that the Democratic base would probably not back any of his first, second, or third tier choices, and he also admitted that he’d probably not have endorsed any of the frontrunners the Dems have in their primary race now. He still argued, though, that despite not having a reputation for backing popular candidates, he knows who the Democrats should be pushing for. At least, he says he knows the “types” of candidates they should field.

“Granted, no one who is pro-Trump at this point will even remotely consider voting for someone else,” Axton said, “but I think if Democrats would consider nominating someone who thinks taxes should be zero percent, bootstraps are you need to eat with, and that college shouldn’t even exist, much less be free, I think they’d have a real shot at beating Trump. Clearly what the country is yearning for is a choice between the party that turned into Trump’s cult versus someone who helped create the environment that made it so easy for Trump to turn the party into a cult.”

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Writer/comedian James Schlarmann is the founder of The Political Garbage Chute and his work has been featured on The Huffington Post. You can follow James on Facebook, Spotify, and Instagram, but not Twitter because Twitter is a cesspool.