Nolan Finley: Those battlin' Republicans are back at it

Nolan Finley, The Detroit News on Dec 13, 2024

Published in Op Eds

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Republicans should be enjoying a blissful post-election honeymoon, if only they could stop bickering long enough to bask in that loving feeling.

Instead of building on the coalition that carried Donald Trump back to the White House and the GOP to full control of Congress, the party is doing what it did in 2016, driving out anyone who fails a purity test.

The RINO hunters are well armed and filling social media with calls to destroy those Republicans who don’t march loyally with the MAGA army.

Billionaire Elon Musk, Trump’s consigliere and stand-in first lady, promises to fund primary challenges of Republican senators who oppose the president-elect’s cabinet nominees.

Never mind that a similar strategy to replace sure-thing GOP incumbents with extremist primary challengers cost Republicans control of the House in 2018 and then the Senate in 2020.

The current targets are Iowa Sen. Joni Ernst and South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham for daring to question the wisdom of tapping Pete Hegseth, a weekend cable TV host with no executive experience, to run the Defense Department.

A president and a party need old hands like Graham and Ernst, with the confidence and independence to voice contrary views, to keep them from walking off the dock, as they are doing with the Hegseth pick.

Just 37% of Americans support that nomination, and 35% oppose it, according to an Emerson poll. The backing for Hegseth is far less than the nearly 50% Trump won in the November balloting.

The gap most likely represents the non-MAGA independents, reluctant Republicans and disaffected Democrats who are responsible for Trump’s November victory. They were willing to give Trump a second chance, but not a carte blanche. Alienate them and this new GOP renaissance will be short-lived.

Republicans should be sending the message in the forming of their new government that there’s room for everyone.

Yet barely a week after the election, Trump sent notice to his former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley and ex-Secretary of State and CIA Director Mike Pompeo that they were not welcome to rejoin his team.

Both served Trump well in his first term, and both are broadly viewed as part of the political mainstream. They angered the MAGA crowd with their criticism of Trump after he left office; Haley was his most serious primary challenger.

But they offered experience to a new administration short on that quality; they have the standing to shield the president-elect from his worst impulses, and their presence at his table might have calmed the non-MAGA Trump voters.

The felon GOP strategist Roger Stone calls the shunning of Republicans such as Haley and Pompeo “separating the wheat from the chaff.”

Republicans don’t have such a firm grip on Washington or the electorate that they can afford to separate themselves from anyone willing to work with them.

If the GOP is hell-bent on driving out everyone who isn’t 100% MAGA-certified, they again will be out of favor with the electorate and out of power in Washington.

Trump has taken to saying lately that success will be his best revenge. That’s smart, and the most constructive way to look at things. But success will depend on his ability to unite the country. To do that, he first has to unite his own party.

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