Skip to main content
Thursday, October 29, 2026Oct 29

This story is free to read.

Opinion: GOP must be careful not to go off the rails

File Photo/Evan Vucci/The Associated Press / Elon Musk, speaking at a Trump campaign rally on Oct. 27, 2024, in New York, apparently has the knives sharpened for senators who oppose Trump's Cabinet picks.
File Photo/Evan Vucci/The Associated Press / Elon Musk, speaking at a Trump campaign rally on Oct. 27, 2024, in New York, apparently has the knives sharpened for senators who oppose Trump's Cabinet picks. File Photo/Evan Vucci/The Associated Press / Elon Musk, speaking at a Trump campaign rally on Oct. 27, 2024, in New York, apparently has the knives sharpened for senators who oppose Trump's Cabinet picks.

Republicans should be enjoying a blissful post-election honeymoon, if only they could stop bickering long enough to bask in that loving feeling.

Instead of building on the coalition that carried Donald Trump back to the White House and the GOP to full control of Congress, the party is doing what it did in 2016, driving out anyone who fails a purity test.

The RINO hunters are well armed and filling social media with calls to destroy those Republicans who don’t march loyally with the MAGA army.

Billionaire Elon Musk, Trump’s consigliere and stand-in first lady, promises to fund primary challenges of Republican senators who oppose the president-elect’s Cabinet nominees.

Never mind that a similar strategy to replace sure-thing GOP incumbents with extremist primary challengers cost Republicans control of the House in 2018 and then the Senate in 2020.