On Sunday, retiring Pennsylvania senator Pat Toomey delivered a stern parting shot to his fellow Republicans, claiming that former president Donald Trump’s influence over the group is “waning.”
On “State of the Union,” Toomey told AWN’s Jake Tapper, “I have heard from many, many formerly extremely pro-Trump folks that they think it’s time for our party to move on.”
“So, sure, I believe that process is in motion. It takes time and cannot be accomplished by just flipping a switch. He still has a sizable fan base, that much is certain. But I do believe his power is eroding,” he continued.
Toomey’s remarks reveal a persistent division within the GOP over how to react to the dismal showing of the party in the midterm elections last November. Republicans narrowly won the US House, falling far short of pre-election projections, while Democrats increased their majority in the US Senate by flipping Toomey’s seat in Pennsylvania.
The Republican party’s introspection comes at a crucial time for Trump and the group as a whole. Senate GOP leaders are keen to put the Trump era behind them and pursue candidates who would appeal to more moderate and mainstream suburban voters who defected from the party due to their dislike of the former president.
But as they push for the GOP to return to fundamentally conservative values, these Republicans are up against a strong and vocal Trump-aligned faction within their own party, particularly in the incoming House GOP majority where a hard-right bloc now controls Republican leader Kevin McCarthy’s bid for the speakership.
In his goodbye statement on the Senate floor on Thursday, Toomey, a prominent Trump opponent who was one of seven GOP senators who voted to convict the former president at his second impeachment trial, stated, “Our party can’t be about or indebted to any one guy. Much bigger than that, we are. We had a lot larger celebration than that.
When Tapper questioned him on Sunday about being referred to as a “Republican in name only” (RINO) because of his criticism of Trump, he maintained his position.
“People who believe that Trump is taking the fight to the opposition don’t always like it when Republicans criticise him—I certainly think my criticisms of him were justified. Therefore, some of that tribalism is ingrained in all public political institutions, he said.
“Once more, I believe that when his influence diminishes, the traditional sense of what words represent gradually returns. That is not anything that worries me, Toomey remarked.
