The Rejection of Ed Martin As U.S. Attorney For D.C. Reflects The Dying Embers Of The RINO GOP Establishment

No nominee of a Democrat President is rejected by his own party's Senators as too extreme when Democrats control the Senate.

The GOP majority in the Senate is about the last vestige of the GOP Establishment that originated with the election of Pres. Reagan in 1980 and continued on through the second term of Pres. Bush 43 in 2008.

Donald Trump came down the escalator at the Trump Tower in June 2015 as an almost “apolitical” outsider with no base of support in the Republican party. He then proceeded to lay waste to 16 candidates for the GOP nomination in 2016, all of whom represented some point on the spectrum of GOP politics from "conservative" to "moderate/liberal."

1. Ted Cruz

2. Marco Rubio

3. John Kasich

4. Jeb Bush

5. Ben Carson

6. Rand Paul

7. Mike Huckabee

8. Carly Fiorina

9. Chris Christie

10. Jim Gilmore

11. Rick Santorum

12. George Pataki

13. Lindsay Graham

14. Bobby Jindal

15. Scott Walker

16. Rick Perry

By March of 2016 he had driven everyone listed above out of the race — often in very blunt and personal fashion. He then went on to take out the Democrat-President-In-Waiting-for-12-years Hillary Clinton in a race where he was thought to be 20 points behind in the summer of 2016.

Some on the above list took note of the direction the GOP was headed after Pres. Trump’s win in 2016, and have climbed on board in a meaningful fashion. Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio, and to a lesser extent Rand Paul would fit that description.

Some are, and always have been, rank opportunists who moved only out of a sense of self-preservation while GOP was undergoing this transition — Lindsay Graham most prominently.

But some became outright “NeverTrumpers” — Chris Christie, John Kasich, and to a lesser degree Jeb Bush.

Thom Tillis -- who announced he would not support the nomination of Ed Martin to be U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia, thereby killing it — would likley be a NeverTrumper if he was no longer in “The Club.”

This was not always the case, as Tillis has generally supported Trump policies in the past, and was endorsed by Trump for re-election in his last race. But, as noted below, he has twice now joined with NeverTrumpers in the Senate to oppose Trump nominees. They failed in trying to block Pete Hegseth from being Secretary of Defense.

But Tillis made it possible to block Ed Martin. What that means for future nominations that will come to the Senate remains to be seen, but once-bitten ….

As an aside, while Matt Gaetz was announced as the first nominee for Attorney General, he was greeted by mostly guffaws in the Senate and lasted only a week before his nomination was dropped. Opposing Gaetz — clearly unqualified for the position — wasn’t really indicative of anything other than an ability to recognize objective reality.

There are currently 12 GOP members on the 22 member Judiciary Committee. Under Senate rules a tie vote on a nominee does not advance, and the nomination is dead. With Tillis announcing he would not support the nomination of Ed Martin to be U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia, the best possible outcome in the Committee was 11-11, so the nomination was not going to make it out of the Committee.

Ed Martin is within the “inner circle” of Trump’s legal team, and was the second U.S. Attorney nominee to be announced — only behind former SEC head Jay Clayton, nominated to be U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York.

Clayton’s nomination is currently being held up by Chuck Schumer — that’s the company that Tillis is keeping right now.

Tillis fronting the effort to kill the Martin nomination doesn’t mean he was the only Senator who wanted to block Martin from the job. Texas Senator John Cornyn, also on the Committee, had suggested that he had some issues with the nomination. But Cornyn has already drawn a primary challenge in Texas for his re-election in 2026 — the very popular Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton. If Cornyn was pushed into voting against the Martin nomination, that would have been used against him by Paxton in the primary contest next year. So Tillis did the dirty work.

Remember that Tillis and Cornyn were two members who were originally uncommitted about supporting Pete Hegseth as Secretary of Defense. Cornyn eventually realized that he could not oppose the very first Cabinet Secretary nominee of Pres. Trump after his win and return to office, and announced his support weeks after the nomination was first made. Hegseth was nominated Nov. 11. Cornyn only announced his support after a call with Pres. Trump on Dec. 7.

After efforts to derail the nomination through female Senators failed — with Joni Ernst realizing that opposition to Hegseth would earn her a primary challenge she might not survive — Tillis stepped forward at the 11th hour to express concerns over an 11th hour allegation that Hegseth’s ex-wife had expressed fear of him to her former sister-in-law. Hegseth’s ex-wife publicly stated the allegation was not true. With the limb having been cut off behind him, Tillis had to engineer a not-to-subtle walk-back from his suggestion the week prior to the vote that he might vote against confirmation.

Tillis was willing to block Martin’s nomination on completely bogus grounds because he guessed correctly that the political cost for blocking a sub-cabinet nominee like a U.S. Attorney would be less than would have been the case for blocking Hegseth.

But, now that the threshold has been crossed, this maneuver could play itself out more frequently in the weeks and months ahead as more sub-cabinet nominees face confirmation votes.

Tillis and Cornyn are two well-known members of the anti-Trump caucus in the Senate. Others who have voted against or otherwise obstructed significant parts of the Trump Administration agenda over the years are Mitch McConnell, Susan Collins, Lisa Murkowski — and current Majority Leader John Thune. To one degree or another, Joni Ernst, Lindsay Graham, Bill Cassidy, and Roger Wicker have also worked to opposed certain Trump Administration priorities.

Now consider these facts — the time these individuals have been in the Senate:

McConnell: 1985-2025

Collins: 1997-2025

Cornyn: 2002-2025

Murkowski — 2002-2025

Graham: 2003-2025

Thune: 2005-2025

Wicker: 2007-2025

Tillis: 2015-2025

Ernst: 2015-2025

Cassidy: 2015-2025

Everyone on the list entered the Senate prior to the 2016 election cycle where Pres. Trump crushed the the 16 GOP establishment hopefuls who entered the GOP primary to take back the White House from the Obama-led Democrats.

Everyone on the list was a product of the Reagan-Bush era of the GOP establishment. The absolute betrayal of the GOP base — beyond just the MAGA crowd — by these establishment types was best exemplified by Bush Administration VP Dick Cheney and Liz Cheney endorsing Democrat Kamala Harris, the worst major party candidate for POTUS in history, and literally endorsing and campaigning with Senate Democrats to help the Chuck Schumer remain as Senate Majority Leader as a “check” on Pres. Trump if he was able to win.

I’ve never been someone who made a big deal over calling some GOP elected officials “RINOS.” Every district and state places unique demands on elected members of the GOP, and there is no one-size-fits-all for an elected official that allows them to vote in lockstep and properly serve their constituency.

But the willingness of members of the Senate to subvert the policy and personnel preferences of the second Trump Administration, after his re-election clearly revealed that he has expanded the party with a message that diverts from the Reagan-Bush era establishment GOP alums, is simply a betrayal of the 2024 GOP electorate. They long for the opportunity to “turn back the clock” to 2014, and hope the entire “Trump era” is lost in the sands of time once Pres. Trump is no longer in the White House.

Most have been in the Senate 20+ years, and many expect to still be there in 2029.

It is my hope that all those on the list above will find themselves keeping company with Liz Cheney in some Washington think tank lamenting the fact that the world turns on without them, and pining away for a return to a yesteryear that is never going to happen.