The image above is from this Business Insider article.
Below are Tweets from Sen. Mitt Romney
According to “Hawley, Cruz face rising anger, possible censure” in The Hill:
Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah), seated behind the Missouri junior senator, appeared to be glaring at Hawley on Wednesday night after the Senate resumed work following the riot. Hawley at the time was explaining why he was joining challenges to the Electoral College vote.
As the Senate was evacuated earlier, Romney reportedly was heard yelling “this is what you’ve gotten, guys.”
Two other Republican senators were milder in their condemnation:
Sen. Ben Sasse (R-Neb.) told NPR that Hawley “was doing something that was really dumbass” in challenging the Electoral College votes.
Asked during an interview on Fox News’s “The Journal Editorial Report” whether Senate GOP colleagues such as Hawley and Cruz bear any responsibility for the storming of the Capitol last week, Sen. Pat Toomey (R-Pa.) said there’s “a lot of soul searching that’s going to have to happen.”
“There are people who perpetuated really the big lie, that Donald Trump won in a landslide and it’s all been stolen from him,” he said. “That’s not true and we know that’s not true.
Conservative New York Times columnist Ross Douthat in his OpEd ”How the Republican Party Could Break — After the Capitol Hill riot, the divide between reality and fantasy may become too wide to bridge” writes about how the Romney could be a part of the Republican Party breaking apart:
Here’s how it could happen. First, the party’s non-Trumpist faction — embodied by senators like Mitt Romney and Lisa Murkowski, various purple- and blue-state governors and most of the remaining Acela corridor conservatives, from lawyers and judges to lobbyists and staffers — pushes for a full repudiation of Trump and all his works, extending beyond impeachment to encompass support for social-media bans, F.B.I. surveillance of the MAGA universe and more.
He says that the core of Trump’s support could become as paranoid as Q devotees. If this leads to more empty acts of violence it would further radicalizing the center right against the right leading to more fringe QAnon type candidates. Eventually this could to result in a big chunk of the House G.O.P. occupying not just a different tactical reality from the party’s elite but a completely different universe.
… under these conditions that party could really collapse or really break. The collapse would happen if Trumpists with a dolchstoss ( stab-in-the-back anti-Semitic conspiracy theory HB) narrative and a strong Q vibe start winning nominations for Senate seats and governorships in states that right now only lean Republican. A party made insane and radioactive by conspiracy theories could keep on winning deep-red districts, but if its corporate support bailed, its remaining technocrats jumped ship and suburban professionals regarded it as the party of insurrection, it could easily become a consistent loser in 30 states or more.
Alternatively, a party dominated by the Trump family at the grassroots level, with Greene-like figures as its foot soldiers, could become genuinely untenable as a home for centrist and non-Trumpist politicians. So after the renomination of Trump himself or the nomination of Don Jr. in 2024, a cluster of figures (senators like Romney and Susan Collins, blue-state governors like Maryland’s Larry Hogan) might simply jump ship to form an independent mini-party, leaving the G.O.P. as a 35 percent proposition, a heartland rump.
It seems to me that if the Republican Party splits Romney, by dint of his gravitas and reputation, is the likely leader of what might become a moderate wing of the GOP capable of winning Congressional seats in some states. If the Democrats lose the House and/or Senate majority in two years it is possible that Biden’s work will not be totally thwarted if moderate Republicans vote with the Democrats on enough major legislation and Biden appointments.
The nightmare scenario of the Republicans winning back the Senate in two years returning Mitch McConnell to leadership might not occur if the moderates there can put forth an alternative candidate. Hopefully McConnell’s power over Senate Republicans will diminish over the next two years.
A viable moderate wing of the GOP might be capable of winning some state governorships and take over state legislatures now controlled by the far right.