The writing is on the wall. The Republican Party is Donald Trump’s party now, and even some Republicans who opposed all things Trump are caving to the admission. One of those is Mitt Romney, who is now defending President-elect Trump’s cabinet picks.
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An interesting development, indeed.
Sen. Mitt Romney (R-UT) is contending people “can’t complain” about President-elect Donald Trump‘s Cabinet picks given Trump signaled he would make such picks before he was elected.
Romney, a longtime critic of the president-elect, is leaving the Senate in January, after one term representing Utah. He said on CNN’s State of the Union on Sunday that since Trump won the election “overwhelmingly,” he should be given a chance to enact the policies he desires.
“Donald Trump won. He won overwhelmingly. He said what he was going to do, and that’s what he’s doing. I mean, people are saying, ‘oh, I don’t like this appointment or this policy that he’s talking about,’” Romney said. “But those are the things he said he was going to do when he ran. So you can’t complain about someone who does what he said he was going to do.”
“And I agree with him on a lot of policy fronts. I disagree with him on some things. But it’s like, OK, give him a chance to do what he said he’s going to do and see how it works out,” the GOP senator added.
Mitt Romney may have been retroactively listening to another Republican hero, Ronald Reagan, who said, “The person who agrees with you 80 percent of the time is a friend and an ally – not a 20 percent traitor.”
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Actually, Senator Romney is making some sense here. Per Reagan’s Rule of 80 Percent, most of the GOP will be marking out a lot of common ground where they can present a united front. But the GOP’s House and Senate majorities are thin, especially in the House. Team Trump can count on two years; after that, a possible loss of the House would well hamper the rest of Trump’s historic non-consecutive second term. So the Republicans have to act and act fast, and for that, they have to stick together – every one of them.
This is something that the Democrats have, historically, been pretty good at. And we shouldn’t count on their current discombobulation following their 2024 election shellacking keeping them befuddled for long; they will surely re-unite against the Trump agenda. Trump Derangement Syndrome is contagious, after all, and most of the Democrats have a good big dose of it.
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Romney, in an interview on CNN, called for an end to tribalism in politics:
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He should be delivering this message to the Democrats. They are the worst offenders when it comes to tribalism in politics.
Mitt Romney, we should note, is leaving the Senate. His political career after January is uncertain, and his intentions – well, who knows? But he sure has seen the writing on the wall. For now, at least for the next four years, the Republican world is Donald Trump’s world, and the rest of us just live in it.