Of course, weak sauce Mitt Romney isn’t happy about this aspect of the Trump presidency. His era is done. His time as party leader was short and marked by total defeat. The man just doesn’t have what it takes to win the fights that need to be won right now. He’s too nice. And he’s been a major pain in the ass ever since he became a U.S. Senator. Yes, he voted to confirm Amy Coney Barrett, but he has a long road regarding redemption. He voted with Democrats on a politically motivated impeachment article against Trump. Sorry, you deserve to be cast out from the GOP forever for such a betrayal. At the same time, Romney was spot-on regarding Trumpism in the GOP. It’s here to stay, and it’s not going away (via Daily Caller):
Republican Utah Sen. Mitt Romney lamented President Donald Trump’s likely continued “substantial influence” on the Republican Party once he leaves office during a Tuesday afternoon appearance on “CNN Newsroom.”
[…]
CNN anchor Dana Bash brought up Trump’s “very firm grip on the Republican Party” along with the fact that retiring Michigan Rep. Paul Mitchell left the GOP because of Trump before asking Romney if he is concerned the party won’t “be able to overcome Trumpism in the near future.”
“Well, I think President Trump will continue to have substantial influence on the party,” Romney responded. “And I think if you look at the people who are rumored to be thinking of running in 2024, besides the president, those are people who are trying to appeal to kind of a populist approach, so I don’t think Trumpism is going away.”
It’s not. The GOP’s populist approach led to Trump earning the most votes for an incumbent president ever. It led to nearly 30 percent of the LGBT community voting for him. It led double-digit support among black voters and increased support among Hispanic and Asian voters from four years ago. I saw someone say that it’s a rural rainbow coalition. It’s something that Mitt Romney could never have built—ever. And marginal losses in the white working-class sectors in the Rust Belt cost Trump a second term, but he’ll be back in four years. You can already feel it coming together.