https://x.com/FmrRepMattGaetz/status/1862568887851638833
The anti-Trump movement is in tatters. Now it’s scrambling to remain relevant.
Trump’s convincing win allowed him to quickly consolidate power within his party as he prepares to return to Washington.
By LISA KASHINSKY and ADAM WREN POLITICO 11/29/2024 05:00
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. In recent days, former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley ripped into two of the president-elect’s top appointees, Tulsi Gabbard and Robert F. Kennedy Jr., on her radio show. Former Virginia Rep. Barbara Comstock skewered Trump’s nominees as a Cabinet of “Putinists and pedophiles.”
And former Vice President Mike Pence attempted to rally anti-abortion conservatives against Kennedy as Trump’s Health and Human Services secretary.
But they are screaming their words of caution from the sidelines as Trump, having already overhauled their party, forges ahead with remaking Washington in his MAGA image.And he is doing so with the backing of broadly supportive congressional Republicans who have little political incentive to listen to his detractors.
“The Never Trumpers and Lincoln Project folks just need to climb back under their rocks for a few years,” said Scott Reed, the veteran GOP strategist and leader of the Pro-Pence Committed to America PAC.
Trump’s convincing win allowed the president-elect to quickly consolidate power within his party as he prepares to return to Washington. And it has scattered the remnants of the Republican resistance to him back to their respective corners to regroup.
Some, like Haley and Pence, who criticize their former boss on some issues but remain aligned with him on others,still believe they can change a GOP that has near-fully bent its knee to Trump. But others, particularly those among the pillars of the original Never-Trump movement who were long ago pushed aside by their party or left it of their own volition, have given up trying to resurrect Republicanism as they knew it.
Joe Walsh, a former GOP congressman and prominent Trump critic who challenged him for the party’s nomination in 2020 before becoming an independent, said the former president’s reelection has taken reforming the Republican Party “off the table.” He also believes it has dimmed the prospects for disaffected Republicans to form a new party. “It’s down to two options,” Walsh said in an 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.…
Kek just a portion of the long article
https://archive.is/WHRgK
The anti-Trump movement is in tatters. Now it’s scrambling to remain relevant.Trump’s convincing win allowed him to quickly consolidate power within his party as he prepares to return to Washington. By LISA KASHINSKY and ADAM WREN POLITICO 11/29/2024 05:00 PM EST
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 relevancein a reordered GOP. In recent days, former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley ripped into two of the president-elect’s top appointees, Tulsi Gabbard and Robert F. Kennedy Jr., on her radio show.
Former Virginia Rep. Barbara Comstock skewered Trump’s nominees as a Cabinet of “Putinists and pedophiles.”
And former Vice President Mike Pence attempted to rally anti-abortion conservatives against Kennedy as Trump’s Health and Human Services secretary.
But they are screaming their words of caution from the sidelines as Trump, having already overhauled their party, forges ahead with remaking Washington in his MAGA image.And he is doing so with the backing of broadly supportivecongressional Republicans who have little political incentive to listen to his detractors.
“The Never Trumpers and Lincoln Project folks just need to climb back under their rocks for a few years,” said Scott Reed, the veteran GOP strategist and leader of the Pro-Pence Committed to America PAC.
Trump’s convincing win allowed the president-elect to quickly consolidate power within his party as he prepares to return to Washington. And it has scattered the remnants of the Republican resistance to him back to their respective corners to regroup.
Some, like Haley and Pence, who criticize their former boss on some issues but remain aligned with him on others,still believe they can change a GOPthat has near-fully bent its knee to Trump.
But others, particularly those among the pillars of the original Never-Trump movement who were long ago pushed aside by their party or left it of their own volition, have given up trying to resurrect Republicanism as they knew it.
Joe Walsh, a former GOP congressman and prominent Trump critic who challenged him for the party’s nomination in 2020 before becoming an independent, saidthe former president’s reelection has taken reforming the Republican Party “off the table.”
He also believes it has dimmed the prospects for disaffected Republicans to form a new party. “It’s down to two options,” Walsh said in an 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.…
https://archive.is/WHRgK
This article should be framed!