2014 Thom Tillis wouldn't vote for 2026 Thom Tillis

Tillis has had a long, ugly journey from principled conservative to Trump toady.

Thom Tillis is going full MAGA. His spokesperson told the right-wing website Breitbart that Tillis “is working on making sure Pam Bondi and Kash Patel get through the Senate Judiciary Committee and get confirmed on the floor.” The spokesperson also said that he will support any candidate that “gets a favorable vote out of committee.” We assume the North Carolina Senator will periodically pull his head out of Trump’s ass for air.

As Tillis prepares for his re-election bid, he wants to make sure that nobody doubts his loyalty to Trump or suspects he has any principles. No, he’s going to bow down to Trump. Like Alabama Senator Tommy Tuberville said, “President Trump and J.D. Vance are going to be running the Senate now.” How utterly embarrassing, but Thom Tillis has boarded that train.

During Tump’s first term Tillis flirted with trying to stand on principle but found that his backbone just would not support him. He would periodically take an independent stand only to quickly fold as soon as Trump showed his disapproval. Once, Tillis even wrote a principled op-ed about why he would vote against Trump’s abuse of executive power by using emergency powers to build the border wall. He promptly flip-flopped, voting to support the measure in what should have been a humiliating episode. You can only be embarrassed, though, if you have a sense of shame, something Tillis and most Republicans have relinquished as a condition of sucking up to Trump.

Not that long ago, Tillis was a pretty normal conservative Republican. As Speaker of the North Carolina House, he generally reeled-in the most outlandish right-wing schemes, like establishing a state religion or creating a state currency. He was a guy who got into politics to get more bike paths in his upscale suburban community located just north of Charlotte. He was an IBM executive before becoming a handsomely paid business consultant. Nothing in his resume said MAGA!

Today, Tillis has pledged his support for the grifter, putting loyalty to Trump above duty to his country. Donald Trump is now selling perfume, commemorative coins, and cryptocurrency. While the Founding Fathers are rolling over in their graves, Tillis is pretending all of this is normal. He knows better. He just lacks to scruples to say so.

Tillis is probably the best example of the capitulation of the Reagan GOP to MAGA of anybody in Congress. He began his career as a moderate, business friendly conservative. While he occasionally bowed to the whims of social conservatives, like supporting a constitutional ban on gay marriage in North Carolina, he mostly moderated his positions. As recently as 2022, he supported a measure to codify marriage equality and he voiced skepticism about 15-week ban on abortion that Senator Lindsey Graham proposed.

Today, he’s about throw his support behind a vaccine-denier with little managerial experience to head the Department of Health and Human Services, an alcoholic with allegations of sexual abuse to serve as Secretary of Defense, a potential Russian asset to lead our intelligence service, and a Trump sycophant who vowed to go after political enemies to run the FBI. He’s defending Trump as the incoming president requires a loyalty test for employment in the administration. He’s silent as Trump vows to pardon all of the January 6 defendants, even ones who violently attacked the Capitol police. Tillis has no lines in the sand. Trump can do whatever he wants as far as the Senator is concerned.

Tillis has travelled a long, ugly road. He’s put his political career ahead of any core values he may have once held. He probably justifies his choice by believing that he’s better than the alternative. He sees himself as a guy will stand up to Trump when necessary, but he’s never shown the sort of intestinal fortitude that he imagines he has. The practical difference between Tuberville, probably the weakest intellectual link in the Senate, and Tillis is nil. The only difference is that Tuberville doesn’t know better and Tillis does.

Since 2014, when Thom Tillis was elected to the Senate, he’s sacrificed almost all of his principles in an attempt to stay in the good graces of the MAGA base. As he faces a likely primary in 2026 from a true MAGA acolyte, he had the opportunity to become voice for traditional conservative principles in his party, even if it cost him the nomination. Instead, he opted to sell out to the grifter and conman. He chose to become the candidate that 2014 Thom Tillis wouldn’t support.