“It could well be a harbinger of what is to come for the Republican Party and its continued rise around the nation,” Dr. Charles Dunn says of Gov. Jim Justice switching to the Republican Party.

Justice made the announcement last week at a Huntington political rally featuring President Donald Trump, where the first-term governor declared that the Democratic Party “walked away from me.”

That statement mirrors another former Democrat, Ronald Reagan, who stated that “I didn’t leave the Democratic Party. The party left me.”

The switch caught the attention of the liberal Washington Post, which reported that Justice’s party switch gives the GOP 26 states with both a Republican governor and a Republican state legislature. Only six states can boast of a Democrat in both the executive and legislative offices.

“West Virginia’s governor is switching parties and Democrats just hit a new low,” reads the August 3 headline.

Dunn points out that the governor’s party change comes in a historically Democratic state, which suggests to him a political party in decline.

“The decline of the Democratic Party is principally this: it doesn’t have a message that appeals to Americans,” Dunn observes.

As the 2018 elections near, Dunn speculates that Democratic Senator Joe Manchin will be under pressure to also make the switch to the GOP.

“He’s coming up for re-election in 2018,” Dunn points out. “And Trump carried all counties, and the Democratic governor saw the light and switched parties. And so the pressure is almost going to be unbearable on him to switch.”