House Speaker Rep. Mike Johnson (R-Louisiana) at the 2024 Republican National Convention in Milwaukee, Wisconsin on July 16, 2024 (Maxim Elramsisy /Shutterstock.com)
Scathing condemnation of President Donald Trump's "big, beautiful bill," which narrowly passed in the U.S. House of Representatives on Thursday, July 3, isn't hard to find on the right. But it typically comes from MSNBC pundits and writers for The Bulwark — not the Republican National Committee (RNC) or GOP members of Congress.
The conservatives and libertarians who were unwavering in attacking the "big, beautiful bill" — from MSNBC hosts Michael Steele, Joe Scarborough and Nicolle Wallace (three right-of-center voices on the liberal-leaning outlet) to The Bulwark's Tim Miller (a former GOP strategist) — were prominent figures in a pre-Trump, pre-MAGA era of the Republican Party. And their vehement disdain for Trumpism has made them persona non grata in 2025's GOP.
When the U.S. House of Representatives passed the "big, beautiful bill" on Thursday, July 3, there were only two Republican "no" votes: Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky and Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania (whose district is in the Philadelphia suburbs). And the fact that most GOP lawmakers capitulated in the end, according to Politico's Jonathan Martin, speaks volumes about the state of the Republican Party in 2025.
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In an article published on the 4th of July, Martin explains, "The so-called Big Beautiful Bill was always destined to pass, and it's instructive to realize why: for Republican lawmakers, this was an up-or-down vote on President Donald Trump. The sprawling measure — which, at its core, was really one big, beautiful tax extender — was never about those tax rates or Medicaid or the deficit. The underlying legislation was no bill at all, but a referendum on Trump. And that left congressional Republicans a binary choice that also had nothing to do with the policy therein: They could salute the president and vote yes and or vote no and risk their careers in a primary."
Martin adds, "It doesn't take a political science PhD to realize where today's GOP would land. Don't believe me, just ask the senior senator from North Carolina, Thom Tillis."
Sen. Tillis, one of the three Senate Republicans who voted "no" on the megabill, recently announced that he won't be seeking reelection in 2026. The other GOP "no" votes in the U.S. Senate were Maine's Susan Collins and Kentucky's Rand Paul.
Martin observes, "The hard truth for small-government conservatives in Congress to swallow is that their primary voters care more about fidelity to Trump than reducing the size of the federal government…. It's fitting that this Trump-era fact of political life is most difficult for Republicans on opposite sides of the ideological spectrum to grasp."
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The Politico reporter continues, "What unites Senators Rand Paul and Susan Collins, a goldbug curious libertarian and old-school New England moderate? Neither is willing to accept a purely tribal politics in which substance is secondary to a cult of personality…. So Trump may not care about the details, but Democratic ad-makers in next year's midterm will — and they'll bet that the Medicaid cuts the president swore he'd never enact will do more to move voters than their tax bracket remaining the same."
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Jonathan Martin's full article for Politico is available at this link.