Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah) is coming to grips with the fact that President-elect Donald Trump and his Make America Great Again movement are now at the heart of the Republican Party.
The outgoing senator couldn’t deny that Trump’s far-right faction is now in control, discussing America’s shifting political landscape during an interview on CNN’s “State of the Union” on Sunday.
Asked if there was a future for a “post-Trump” GOP, Romney freely told host Jake Tapper, “Oh, MAGA is the Republican Party, and Donald Trump is the Republican Party today.”
“And if you were to ask me who the nominee will be in 2028, it’ll be JD Vance, alright,” continued Romney, a staunch moderate and once outspoken critic of both Trump and his soon-to-be vice president, Vance.
“Look, the Republican Party has become the party of the working-class, middle-class voter,” he added. “You’ve got to give Donald Trump credit for having done that, taking that away from the Democrats.”
Romney also recognized how he was mistaken in thinking the incoming president “was wrong for the country, wrong for our party, that he wouldn’t win.”
“I think most people disagree with me. I’m willing to live with that,” he said. “I just put emphasis on different things than I think the public at large does right now.”
The Republicans’ 2012 presidential nominee went on to address Trump’s controversial slate of Cabinet picks and called the contenders “an unusual collection of people” before acknowledging that Trump has every right to nominate who he wants.
“I lost, he won, alright. I’d like to revisit that and win, but I didn’t get that chance,” he said. “So these are the kind of people he wants to run, and he’s entitled to that.”
Romney sounded less optimistic about the tone of Trump’s America while addressing his peers in his farewell speech to the Senate earlier this month.
Warning of the perils of political division, he said, “There are some today who would tear at our unity, who would replace love with hate, who deride our foundation of virtue, or who debase the values upon which the blessings of heaven depend.”
“A country’s character is a reflection not just of its elected officials, but also of its people,” Romney continued. “I leave Washington to return to be one among them and hope to be a voice of unity and virtue.”
