Former U.S. President Donald Trump speaks at a primary election night party in Nashua, N.H., on Jan. 23.Matt Rourke/The Associated Press
Republican senators Tim Scott and Marco Rubio proved there are no such things as principles in modern GOP politics when they became the latest ingrates to endorse front-runner Donald Trump for the party’s 2024 presidential nomination.
Mr. Rubio was first out of the gate in throwing his support behind Mr. Trump before the Iowa caucuses, repudiating both his home-state governor, Ron DeSantis, and Nikki Haley, who had defied Mr. Trump in 2016 to back Mr. Rubio for the GOP nod that year.
Ms. Haley has always insisted that she does not take anything personally in politics. That is a good thing, because Mr. Rubio’s move to back Mr. Trump must have been galling for her not just because it smacked of ingratitude, but because it was so hypocritical of him.
You’ll remember that, back in 2016, Mr. Rubio and Mr. Trump traded insults about the size of each other’s various body parts. (Need you ask who started it?) Still, Ms. Haley’s endorsement of the Florida senator was a mostly principled decision based on their shared political philosophy as Ronald Reagan Republicans and young minority Americans out to broaden the GOP tent.
“I wanted somebody that was going to go and show my parents that the best decision they ever made was coming to America,” Ms. Haley, the daughter of Indian immigrants, said then of Mr. Rubio, whose own parents left Cuba for the United States before his birth.
Still, Mr. Rubio, besides looking out for number one, was just doing what most Republican senators have learned to do since Mr. Trump first won the GOP nomination in 2016 – cower, out of fear of retribution or, worse, a primary challenge from a MAGA rival.
Mr. Rubio might still have some faint hope of running again for the White House in 2028, or want to keep his options open. Even if she is unsuccessful this time, Ms. Haley could emerge as the odds-on-favourite for the GOP nomination four years from now. So an endorsement of Ms. Haley now could prove awkward for Mr. Rubio later.
His own 2028 presidential ambitions might also have played a role in Mr. Scott’s decision to endorse Mr. Trump ahead of this week’s New Hampshire primary. That did not make his move any less ungracious. As South Carolina’s governor in 2012, Ms. Haley had catapulted Mr. Scott to prominence by appointing him to fill the state’s then-vacant U.S. Senate seat. And politically speaking, he has a lot more in common with Ms. Haley than Mr. Trump.
Mr. Rubio and Mr. Scott have both backed a federal ban on abortions after 15 weeks or 20 weeks, respectively, while Ms. Haley is a moderate on abortion who has said she believes only a ban on late-term abortions could muster enough votes to pass the U.S. Congress. But on most policy issues, all three politicians hold relatively similar views as pro-business, pro-trade and pro-democracy Republicans who favour a non-isolationist foreign policy. They stand for almost everything Mr. Trump does not.
Besides the weaponization of the Department of Justice to go after Mr. Trump’s enemies and the mass deportation of undocumented immigrants, the Trump acolytes plotting an agenda for his second presidency have promised to fire thousands of federal bureaucrats and concentrate power in the executive branch. Cutting off military aid to Ukraine is at the top of their foreign policy agenda.
Conservative think tanks such as the Heritage Foundation, with its Project 2025 initiative, and the America First Policy Institute, with its Pathway to 2025 plan, have provided templates for a future Trump administration to hit the ground running. Heritage president Kevin Roberts recently said Project 2025 is aimed at “institutionalizing Trumpism.” The think tank is already “training” people to serve in the Trump administration.
“I will be candid and say the agenda that every single member of the administration needs to have is to compile a list of everything that has ever been proposed at the World Economic Forum and object to all of them wholesale,” Mr. Roberts said last week – at the WEF in Davos, Switzerland. “Anyone not prepared to do that and take away this power of the unelected bureaucrats and give it back to the American people is unprepared to be part of the next conservative administration.”
Implementing any agenda would require the kind of discipline that Mr. Trump has never been very good at mustering. His management style is chaotic and he surrounds himself with sycophants. Competence is not his first criterion in choosing members of his staff.
Yet, as the contours of what a second Trump administration might look like become increasingly clear, Mr. Scott and Mr. Rubio – not to mention the roughly two-dozen other GOP senators who have endorsed Mr. Trump for the nomination – have chosen to put themselves before their country. Ms. Haley has every right to take that personally.