Compromised

Thom Tillis is not going to hold Donald Trump accountable.

North Carolina Senator Thom Tillis is on everybody’s radar screen right now. He’s up for re-election in 2026 and is considered the most vulnerable U.S. Senator. He’s also mentioned as someone who might put a check on some of Trump’s worst abuses, including appointing a bunch of unqualified, unethical, and possibly compromised people to his cabinet. I see Tillis as a living example of what Trump has done to the GOP.

Tillis started his political career as a guy who wanted more bike lanes and bike paths added to his upscale community near Lake Norman in northern Mecklenburg County. He apparently liked the limelight and the power. After winning and serving a single term on the city council, Tillis challenged an incumbent Republican state house member and won in a safe GOP district.

Once he became Speaker of the North Carolina House of Representatives, Tillis tried to govern as a moderate, but the tide was running hard right and he mostly acquiesced to the hardliners. He began a pattern that’s followed him through his Senate career. With murky core values, compromise became his guiding principle.

In Washington, Tillis built a reputation as a moderate or pragmatic Senator, working with Democrats occasionally while overtly maintaining the conventional views of a Reagan conservative. Donald Trump changed all that. And he changed—or exposed— Thom Tillis.

Initially, Tillis tried to challenge Trump. As Jim Morrill wrote for The Assembly last week,

In 2018, he sponsored a bill to protect special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 election, a probe then-President Trump loudly opposed. Tillis later helped kill a Trump appointment to the Environmental Protection Agency.

That didn’t last. In 2019, maybe feeling his oats from his previous opposition, Tillis wrote an op-ed opposing Trump’s plan to use an executive order to build the border wall. He promptly folded, continuing a pattern of making statements of principle that he won’t stand behind. In other words, he usually knows what he believes, but he lacks the courage of his convictions.

Tillis might make bold statements against using recess appointments for the unqualified cabinet picks, but don’t expect him to actually obstruct those appointments if that’s the route Trump goes. Regardless, he’s almost certainly going to vote for all of Trump’s appointees now that Matt Gaetz is out of the mix. His re-election is far more important to him than any principles he may or may not hold regarding good government.

This weekend, Tillis posted a meme of Trump that read, “Accountability is coming.” In 2020, Tillis voted against impeaching Trump, saying that the matter belongs before a criminal court and that not enough investigation had been done. I wonder if he still believes Trump should be tried and what he thinks of the House investigation that found Trump violated his oath of office? I’m sure we’ll never know. Accountability isn’t coming. It was thrown under the bus.

If you had told 2006 Thom Tillis, the guy who had just won a state house primary from suburban district, that he would be supporting a convicted sex offender who is selling commemorative coins and bibles for President of the United States, he would have laughed at you. If you told 2006 Tillis that he was about to vote to confirm a woman who has credibly been accused of being a Russian asset as Director of National Intelligence, he would have vehemently denied it. Or if you told him that he would be voting to confirm a vaccine denier to head Health and Human Services, he would say you were crazy. And if you asked him whether a Defense Secretary nominee with no managerial experience and allegations of sexual assault should be confirmed, he would tell you, “Of course not.” And yet 2024 Thom Tillis will probably vote for all three and certainly at least two.

In fact, 2006 Thom Tillis would vehemently oppose much of what he’s about to support. He will spend the next two years making arguments for what’s right and voting for what’s wrong. He’ll post MAGA memes to try to keep the mob at bay. It probably won’t work. The base of the GOP sees through Tillis and knows that he’s not one them. His attempts to woo them make him look phony, not Trumpy.

Tillis lost his way years ago. He doesn’t understand that in order to successfully compromise, you need lines that you won’t cross and Tillis doesn’t seem to have any. Trump knows that he can bully him and that Tillis will fold. As a mediocre country music song says, “You’ve got to stand for something, or you’ll fall for anything.” Trump is proof of that.

Tillis would do well to re-visit the state motto, Esse Quam Videri—to be, rather than to seem—because he often seems to be one thing but is usually something else.