Mike Rogers is a Republican ex-congressman from Michigan who is conservative, pragmatic and has a record of getting things done in congress during his tenure (2003-2015).

Today, he is considering running for president in 2024. Republicans should flock to him like he holds the Holy Grail, because, for their political needs, he may be the answer. 

Today the only declared Republican candidate is ex-president Donald Trump. Trump’s chances of winning in 2024 are somewhere between slim and laughable.  

But Trump’s candidacy poses huge challenges to the party that so much wants to be rid of him in 2024. 

If he wins the early primaries against challengers like Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, ex-vice president Mike Pence, Texas U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz and other Trump era prominent allies, Trump could both lose the general election by landslide proportions and destroy the Republican Party for decades. 

Alternatively, the narcissistic Trump, if defeated in the early primaries, could run as an independent, thereby assuring a fragmented Republican Party with a broken-off Trump wing of radical conspiracy extremists, and a shrunken traditional wing, stained by ignoring Trump’s crimes. 

The new Republican House majority has given every indication that it intends to go “full Trump” in attacking the Jan. 6 Investigation and the Biden Family. 

There is no better path to yet another election drubbing than extending the Trump fantasies of unfair treatment by his opponents, a fantasy that resulted in the killings of federal officers on Jan. 6. 

This House majority will make it much more difficult for Republicans to win in 2024, and more difficult to make a clean break from Trump and end the political losses that continue to pile up from loyalty to Trump.  

The Trumpian House Majority also makes candidates like DeSantis look attractive to the Trump base, and therefore less attractive to voters in the general election. 

Any of the Trump family of elected or appointed officials will face a withering public backlash if Trump is convicted of the several charges that may confront him in the weeks and months ahead. 

Enter Mike Rogers, an actual patriot who served his nation in the FBI, in congress as a national defense expert, and who is clean of all that follows a Trump ally wherever they may go. 

Rogers is not “Mr. Excitement” in his style, and that is not a bad thing. He is a sober, serious individual with a solid record of service to the nation. Most importantly, he poses a clean and clear break from Donald Trump and all the damage that Trump wrought on his party and the nation. 

We need a two-party system that works. Today, we have Democrats who legislate and Republicans who are the grievance party, advancing no workable agenda for the nation.  

Republicans have only one path forward, and that is breaking cleanly from Donald Trump. 

Jim Crawford is a retired educator and political enthusiast living here in the Tri-State.