Take a minute and listen to Thom Tillis, who among other things, declares himself a RINO. What is a Republican these days, Tillis muses? He notes that the party has never been so far away from its central principles as it is now and so is MAGA the new Republican party and the old one has died? Good question. Listen to Tillis’s time frame for disaster in the midterms.
GOP Senator Thom Tillis:
“For the first time in my life, I may actually be a RINO. The Republican party has drifted so far away from limited government, free market and federalism…
If we’re in this sort of chaos in June, then not only do we risk losing the House, but I do… pic.twitter.com/ENC1ut0iKi
— Republicans against Trump (@RpsAgainstTrump) February 1, 2026
Yep, free markets and federalism have been replaced with gross fiscal irresponsibility, oligarchism and fascism. That’s a far cry from the central tenets of what the GOP used to stand for on paper — although let’s face it, they wouldn’t have ended up with Trump in charge if the billionaires and the lunatic fringes in their party didn’t make Trump happen. Trump didn’t simply appear overnight.
Tillis longs for a return to GOP normalcy and oh, so do I. My issue is Republicanism second. I can cope with standard Republicans. It’s this mutated MAGA madness that I find completely intolerable.
I think we can guarantee Senator Tillis that by June the present chaos will not only be here and happening like it is now but that it will be far worse. If there’s one thing Trump has taught us it is wait: it always gets worse. There is no low they won’t go.
“they wouldn’t have ended up with Trump in charge if the billionaires and the lunatic fringes in their party didn’t make Trump happen. Trump didn’t simply appear overnight.”
As Obama said “Trump is not the problem, he’s a symptom of the problem.”
The seeds of Drumpf’s takeover/hijacking of the GOP go back to 2010 when the GOP “Old Guard” were so concerned about the possibility of a rift created by the (astroturfed) TEA Party movement and their threats to split if their candidates couldn’t run under the GOP banner that the extremists were welcomed to the party. Those radicals then set up the “Freedom Caucus” with a vocal minority, always threatening to vote against the mainstream majority GOP (or just withhold support) that the GOP mainstream rolled over and followed the minority.
Then, Drumpf came along in 2016 making similar threats of “creating” his own party if the mainstream GOP rejected him that the GOP welcomed him into the fold. And they’ve been paying for it since.