As Trump continues to dominate GOP, there seems to be no room in party for decent, responsible politicians

After Donald Trump was elected president in 2016, he announced his choice for the new chair of the Republican National Committee. She was Ronna Romney McDaniel from the swing state of Michigan.

Presidential nominees typically get to select a party chair who is compatible with their philosophy and objectives, and McDaniel, who was formally elected to the post in January 2017, has certainly strived to please the boss. Early on, he prevailed on her to drop her maiden name, which is a reminder of the fact that Mitt Romney, the Republican candidate for president in 2012, is her uncle. Henceforth, she has been known simply as Ronna McDaniel. 

While McDaniel has been slavishly loyal to Trump, and has parroted his positions on all significant policy issues, she has been a lackluster fundraiser at best. This week, Trump (seen above in a public domain photo posted on wikimedia commons) called for her replacement as NRC chair on social media, so after serving for seven years, McDaniel must bow to the inevitable; her tenure is over.

For his part, Trump has endorsed the Republican chair from North Carolina, Michael Whatley, to be the new chair of the RNC, and wants his daughter-in-law, Lara Trump, to serve as the national co-chair, ready to step in if something happens to Whatley.

Trump is not one to be concerned about nepotism issues.

His daughter Ivanka Trump, and his son-in-law Jared Kushner held key policy positions in the White House during his presidency, and took care to enhance their financial assets before he left office. Lara Trump, who is married to his son Eric, seems to have enjoyed the limelight, and might be a more sympathetic figure than Donald Trump Jr.’s longtime fiancée Kimberly Guilfoyle, who happens to be the ex-wife of California Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom.

Ronna McDaniel may not be in close contact with her uncle these days, but Mitt Romney clearly isn’t Trump's type of Republican. He ran a somewhat tepid campaign against Barack Obama in 2012, and never bought into Trump’s conspiracy theories that Obama was actually born in Kenya and his birth certificate, showing that he was born to a teenage mother in Hawaii, was a forgery prepared in anticipation of an eventual presidential run.

Mitt Romney has had an unusual political career, having served one term as governor of Massachusetts, after which he declined to run for re-election, and is currently finishing out one term as U.S. senator from Utah. He has announced that he will not seek a second term. At age 77, he was bound to face vigorous opposition from the right wing of his own party if he did run for re-election.

It is generally acknowledged that Romney did a very good job of promoting the Olympic Games when Salt Lake City hosted them, which undoubtedly helped him win election in a state where he has only lived for a few years. He showed himself to be a man of principle when he voted to convict Trump after both of his impeachments.

In 2020, he joined a Black Lives Matter march at the White House. The Utah Republican Party declined to censure Romney for his impeachment votes, but Trump has called Romney a “pompous ass” and “a fool” and has expressed disdain for his failure to defeat Obama. 

It’s hard to see where there is room for principled conservatives in today’s Republican Party.  Rep. Mike Gallagher of Wisconsin was clearly an up-and-coming star until the other day. He was first elected from the Green Bay district in 2016, is a graduate of Princeton University and an ex-Marine, and is just 39 years old.

Gallagher was one of just three House Republicans who voted against the impeachment of HHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, finding no “high crimes or misdemeanors” alleged but simply a profound disagreement over policy concerning border security and immigration. Just days after that vote, Gallagher bowed to the inevitable and announced that he will not seek re-election to a fifth term.

He knew the Trump faction was coming for him, and now follows the lead of former Rep. Adam Kinzinger, a promising young Illinois conservative who retired from Congress in the 2022 election after serving on the January 6th Committee with Liz Cheney.

She did seek re-election in Wyoming, but was defeated by a landslide in the Republican primary after she became the nation’s leading advocate of holding Trump accountable for his role in the insurrection. 

There is always speculation that South Dakota's all-Republican congressional delegation is not enamored of Donald Trump. Our two senators, John Thune and Mike Rounds, hurried to endorse the long-shot presidential candidacy of their Senate colleague, Tim Scott of South Carolina, giving some credence to those rumors.

But if we thought they might show a profile in courage and vote to convict Trump after his second impeachment trial, or if we hoped that Rep. Dusty Johnson might show the courage to oppose the Mayorkas impeachment, we were quickly disappointed. 

Jay Davis is a retired Rapid City attorney