Yesterday, the worst miss in job’s report history made its debut. Only 266,000 out of over one million projected jobs were added to the economy, and it wasn’t just the economists who were surprised. //

It was a watershed moment in the new administration that showed that policy actually matters, and obsessions over decorum seem rather shallow when the bullets really start to fly.

Naturally, given the seriousness of what we witnessed, that meant resident Never Trumpers were talking about Donald Trump yesterday — instead of the failures of Joe Biden and how inflation is threatening to crush the middle class. //

Stephen Hayes
@stephenfhayes
For 6 years, elected GOPers have rationalized their Trump support saying to themselves "if I just compromise my values this one time" the worst will be behind me. They've been wrong every time.

Trump's not going away. This isn't going to get easier. Trump won't bring GOP unity //

Mollie
@MZHemingway
Replying to @MZHemingway
What's more far and away the largest source of division in the party has not been Trump but the NeverTrumpers who refused to accept the legitimacy and significance of his election, spending five years trying to throw him out of office and undermine his electorally winning agenda. //

Stephen Hayes
@stephenfhayes
"Electorally winning agenda."

In 2016 and 2020, Trump underperformed Mitt Romney’s 2012 campaign at the national level. Romney won a higher share of the total vote in 2012 (47.2%) than Trump did in either 2016 (46.1%) or 2020 (46.9%). Romney was challenging a popular incumbent //

This is the delusion of Never Trump, in as stark of terms as I’ve ever witnessed.

Note the appeal to participation trophies instead of actually, you know, winning elections. Mollie Hemingway is obviously correct because Trump did actually win, and her qualifier of “electorally winning” is important. //

It is an exercise in beating one’s head against a brick wall to continue to sugar-coat Mitt Romney as the true representation of a winning coalition. He simply wasn’t, as evidenced by the fact that he did not win. Hayes can cherry-pick whatever results he wants, but in the end, the GOP has moved past Romney’s vision of the Republican party. No amount of fluffing The 2012 loss and obsessing over Donald Trump is going to change that. That doesn’t mean you have to support Trump himself as the 2024 nominee, but it does mean you have to accept the reality of how the party has changed in regards to policy and posture.

The current dynamic is simple. Republican voters prefer a far more restrained foreign policy; they see China as a threat to be combated; they oppose big tech monopolizing the means of information distribution; they want immigration laws followed; and they give no quarter to big corporations that turn around and spit in their faces with woke ideology. It’s not 2005 anymore. Mitt Romney and those like him are never going to represent the GOP at a high level again. Liz Cheney is not the future of the party.

These are facts that can be accepted and worked with, or one can continue to yell at the clouds as they pass. Hayes and his cohorts have chosen the latter path. We’ll see how that works out for them.