As the war of words escalated between Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., and former president Donald Trump, a leading potential contender for the future Republican nomination warned pro-Swamp party members not to get ahead of themselves.
“I still believe that President Trump is the most powerful political figure on either side,” Sen. Tim Scott, R-SC, told Fox News on Wednesday, as reported by the Epoch Times.
“The news loves President Trump, or they hate President Trump, which gives him plenty of coverage,” continued Scott, who spoke in support of Trump during last year’s Republican National Convention.
Scott urged his GOP colleagues to put the country’s interest ahead of their individual personality clashes, saying party divisions would only serve to help power-hungry Democrats consolidate their stranglehold.
“What we need, in fact, is a unified message from the Republican Party,” he said. “We don’t need personalities driving your future.”
But he also dispelled the specious left-driven narrative—endorsed by McConnell—that Trump’s followers were brainwashed cultists who remained blindly loyal to Trump for the wrong reasons.
“The policy positions of President Trump led to the lowest unemployment rates for African-Americans, Hispanics, Asians, for women in 70 years,” he noted.
“… What we need is more President Trump policies that focused on an inclusive economy, focused on HBCU funding, focused on the lowest tax rates we’ve seen in a generation that led to the fastest increase in employment and in wages at the bottom faster than the top,” Scott continued, “because President Trump’s policy positions literally transformed the American economy.”
It comes as rumblings grow louder than ever for a viable third-party split that could consign the Republican Party to corrupt, pro-Establishment centrists while veering the Right in a more populist direction.
Recent polling revealed that 70% of Republicans were likely to follow Trump if the two intra-party factions were to go their separate ways.
“If Trump were to split from the GOP and create his own party, polling suggests he might well create the second largest political party in the country, knocking the GOP down to third place,” Dritan Nesho, CEO and chief pollster at HarrisX, told Hill.TV.
