Prominent Republican critics of Donald Trump are becoming further marginalized in the party as even colleagues who privately oppose the former president want more than anything to stop talking about him.
Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming could be ousted as the No. 3 ranking House Republican this month because she refuses to quit criticizing Trump for claiming the 2020 election was stolen and allegedly fomenting the Jan. 6 ransacking of the United States Capitol. “The 2020 presidential election was not stolen,” Cheney tweeted Monday. “Anyone who claims it was is spreading THE BIG LIE, turning their back on the rule of law, and poisoning our democratic system.”
Many congressional Republicans secretly share Cheney’s views but are tired of litigating Trump’s presidency and fear antagonizing him. Both risk a backlash from GOP voters back home and make it harder to turn the page and reach a point at which Trump’s influence over the party is more befitting an ex-president than one who still sits in the Oval Office, some Republican insiders say.
“He’s gone, and they want his half-life to quickly degrade,” said Rob Stutzman, a Republican strategist in California often critical of Trump. “It’s a matter of strategy. I don’t know that it’s mutually exclusive to eradicate Trumpism but realize to effectively do so may mean not talking about Trump.”
“Never Trump” Republicans are the same minority in the GOP they have always been.
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The former president has retained the strong backing of the party’s voters since exiting the White House, bonds unshaken by his loss to President Joe Biden or handling of the post-election period. Over the weekend, Sen. Mitt Romney was booed while delivering a speech to a convention of the Utah GOP, while the Republican who ran as a Never Trump candidate in a special election House primary in Texas was crushed. The Trump-endorsed candidate won.
Romney, a longtime Trump critic, is still under fire from grassroots Republicans months after voting to convict Trump during a trial in the Senate following the former president’s second impeachment in the waning days of his administration. In the special Texas primary, Michael Wood garnered just 3% of the vote after receiving support from Rep. Adam Kinzinger, a Republican who emerged as a major Never Trump figure after Jan. 6.
“Time to stop pretending there’s a viable lane for NeverTrump candidates in GOP primaries (at least, non-incumbents),” tweeted Dave Wasserman, who analyzes House contests for the Cook Political Report, a nonpartisan political handicapper.
Both during Trump’s tenure and now, top Never Trump Republicans were realistic about how outnumbered they are compared to the former president’s acolytes. Despite the uphill battle, they continue to speak out about Trump, some say, because telling the truth is important and ignoring him has proven ineffective — during his first run for the presidency in 2016 and since.
But some political operatives affiliated with the Never Trump movement argue that even if they did believe shutting up about Trump was the best way to sideline him, doing so would not work.
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Plenty of elected Republicans in Washington, not to mention the campaign committees that comprise the party’s infrastructure, continue to talk about him. Either he is a useful fundraising tool and ends up in email appeals generated by outfits like the Republican National Committee, or his many GOP supporters on Capitol Hill talk about him because they miss him. Still others, happy he is gone, talk about him because they know their voters miss him.
“They’re as guilty as anybody for keeping him in the mix,” said Tim Miller, a veteran political strategist and former Republican active in Never Trump circles.
