After early victories in the primaries, Republicans in Congress are backing Trump
Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, the Republican and close ally of former President Donald J. Trump, was irritated by her colleagues as she left the room last Thursday evening.
“I don't know if it's sunk in here somewhere,” Ms. Greene said as she walked to the elevators and then to Manchester, N.H., where she looked for the former president. “I told everyone that President Trump is the leader of the Republican Party; he will be our presidential candidate. It is time for all Republicans to support his policies.”
If it hadn't sunk in yet, it has now.
After Trump won the New Hampshire primary by 11 percentage points on Tuesday night following his landslide victory in the Iowa caucuses, the small segment of Republicans in Congress who had tried to distance themselves from him ignored him and doubted his staying power. or condemn him quickly got in line behind him. And this time it's happening even faster than in 2016, when Trump first subsumed his party.
In the Senate, at least 29 Republicans — more than half the conference — have now backed Mr. Trump, compared with zero for the only Republican challenger still standing, former Gov. Nikki Haley of South Carolina, who vowed to continue on Tuesday night. with her campaign despite not charting a clear path to victory.
In the Republican-controlled House that has acted as Mr. Trump's sword and shield, vulnerable Republicans representing districts President Biden won in 2020 are quickly walking toward the Trump bandwagon, where their MAGA-loving colleagues greet them with an 'I told you so'. you like this.”
Two of them, Reps. Brandon Williams and Nick LaLota of New York, said Trump was the party's inevitable nominee and that they fully supported voters' choice. Representative John Duarte, a California Republican whose district Biden won by nearly 11 points in 2020, told Axios he expected to “ultimately support Donald Trump for president.”
Tim Miller, who worked as a top adviser to former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, said it wasn't hard to see why.
“Trump slaughtered Nikki Haley among self-identified Republicans last night,” he said. “Republicans want Trump. The politicians are no longer fighting it. That is what their voters want, and they have given up any pretense of fighting their impulses or steering them in a different direction.”
The dynamic could have an immediate impact on the agenda in Congress, where Republicans and Democrats are pushing for an elusive compromise to combine curbs on migration at the southern border with an aid package for Ukraine. Mr. Trump has dismissed the emerging deal as too weak on immigration, and as lawmakers rally behind his candidacy, they appear less likely to challenge him on his signature issue — especially in the Republican-controlled House .
And in the Senate, where Republicans are divided over Trump's candidacy, opposition is melting away. Perhaps the most surprising lawmaker to join the growing line of Trump supporters Tuesday night was Sen. John Cornyn, Republican of Texas, one of three lawmakers vying to succeed Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky as party leader.
“I am proud of our achievements during President Trump's first term,” Mr. Cornyn wrote in a social media post in which he refrained from praising the candidate himself but called him the “Republican voters' choice.” His endorsement came just months after he told the Houston Chronicle that “Trump's time is over,” and that a successful general election candidate had to appeal to voters outside the MAGA base.
Senator John Thune of South Dakota, the No. 2 Republican in the Senate and an outspoken critic of Mr. Trump, took a similar approach on Wednesday, withholding any accolades for the former president but conceding that he appeared headed for the Republican nomination. . Mr. Thune told reporters that Mr. Trump “was in a leadership position, and I have said all along that I will support the nominee. So if he is the nominee, I will do what I can to help the team win the presidency.”
Senator John Barrasso, Republican of Wyoming and the third-ranking Republican in the Senate, who is also in the silent Senate race for party leader, stated clearly earlier this month: “We need Donald Trump back in the White House.”
Mr. McConnell himself has kept quiet, telling reporters at a news conference ahead of the New Hampshire primary that everyone was “watching New Hampshire with great interest,” but said nothing on Wednesday after Mr. Trump won.
The rush to queue again this time has a surreal but unavoidable quality. It's been eight years since Trump first defeated 16 other candidates in the Republican primaries and was ultimately embraced by the very Republican lawmakers who had expressed deep concerns about his ability to serve as commander in chief. It has been three years since the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol, when many Republicans who feared for their lives that day initially blamed Mr. Trump for the violence — but quickly changed course and defended him.
“I really thought January 6 would have been a clear break and I'm surprised it wasn't,” said Senator Tim Kaine, Democrat of Virginia. “I do not understand.”
Democrats have rushed to capitalize on the momentum, arguing that voters will punish Republicans who align with Trump and cost the party its majority in the House of Representatives.
“Donald Trump mentioned it when he said Republicans across the country would all 'bend the knee' and declare their allegiance to him — no matter how toxic he is,” said Viet Shelton, a spokesman for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. “Now we are seeing it happen in real time as party leaders pressure candidates across the country to get in line.”
But Republicans appear to have once again concluded that it's too difficult to find a viable path in Republican politics that doesn't involve a firm embrace of Trump.
Representative Nancy Mace, Republican of South Carolina, defeated a Trump-backed candidate in 2022, at least in part, thanks to the support of Ms. Haley, who campaigned with her. After Jan. 6, Ms. Mace claimed that all of Mr. Trump's achievements had been “wiped away” by his behavior during the mob attack. In response, Trump called her a “big loser.”
As she tries to chart her own political future, Ms. Mace has struggled for months with how to deal with the vexing Trump issue. “I will support the nominee — that's what I'm saying,” she said in April, discussing how to triangulate around Mr. Trump, whom she did not want to support. “And then I shut up.”
That was then.
A day before the New Hampshire primary, Ms. Mace said she supported Mr. Trump for president. On Tuesday night, she showed up at Trump campaign headquarters in Charleston with her Havanese dog, Liberty, to celebrate what she called “the historic victory in New Hampshire!”
Senator Susan Collins of Maine was one of a handful of Republican senators who said she never saw herself supporting Trump, even going so far as to praise Ms. Haley for staying in the race.
“The more people see her, as she seems to be the only alternative to Donald Trump at the moment, the more impressed they will be,” Ms Collins said on Wednesday. But even she declined to formally endorse Ms. Haley, saying she was “personal friends” with many of the other Republican presidential candidates who have since dropped out of the race.
On the right, however, Trump also quickly gathered support from the small group of lawmakers who had tried to experiment with an alternative. Rep. Bob Good of Virginia, the chairman of the House Freedom Caucus, had endorsed Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida for president. But within minutes of Mr. DeSantis pulling the plug on his own bid ahead of the New Hampshire primary, Mr. Good rushed to correct that mistake.
“It is my privilege to express my full support for Donald J. Trump as the 47th President of the United States,” Mr. Good wrote online. “President Trump was the greatest president of my lifetime, and we need him to restore the policies that worked so well for America.”
Rep. Chip Roy, Republican of Texas, who campaigned for Mr. DeSantis to the bitter end, slowly worked his way back into the fold on Tuesday evening.
“Trump supporters rightly just want their country back – and he is listening to them,” he wrote online. “It's his core strength.”