Trump’s stunning electoral victory has thrown his Republican opponents into complete disarray, according to a new report from Politico.
“Donald Trump’s victory splintered the already fractured Never Trump movement into shards and further boxed out his MAGA outcasts, leaving some of his most prominent Republican critics scrambling for relevance in a reordered GOP,” the piece begins.
Authors Lisa Kashinsky and Adam Wren note that prominent Trump critics Nikki Haley, Barbara Comstock and Mike Pence have been left “screaming their words of caution from the sidelines” as Trump continues to rebuild the Republican Party “in his MAGA image,” a project for which the president-elect has broad support within the Party, including from moderates.
While some Republican Trump critics may be content to continue attempting to prevent the full MAGA-fication of the Republican Party, others, such as former Republican Congressman Joe Walsh, now believe that the only place for people like them is outside the party.
Walsh, who challenged Trump for the presidential nomination in 2020 before becoming an independent, has said that reforming the Republican Party is now “off the table.”
“It’s down to two options,” Walsh said in a recent interview.
“Productively throw rocks at the administration—kind of be like a group in exile and from a distance do what we can to damage MAGA, knowing we can never go back—or become Democrats.”
Without political capital or real financial support, Trump’s opponents within the Republican Party will look to Congress to check his “more controversial maneuvers,” Politico adds.
But support for “resistance” against Trump in Congress is likely to dwindle, as public acts of defiance grow more risky, especially since many Republican senators need Trump’s explicit support if they want to win re-election.
Without a Congressional “bulwark,” Never Trumpers may have no effective means of frustrating Trump’s agenda.
When asked about the future prospects of Never Trumpers, Jeff Timmer, former executive director of the Michigan GOP and a member of the Lincoln Project, said: “You mean re-education camps? I’m being an optimist.”