Three months after Mitt Romney was sworn in as U.S. Senator from Utah, the 2012 Republican presidential nominee may soon have his long-anticipated debut as the leading GOP antagonist to President Trump in the Senate.
Sources on Capitol Hill told Newsmax that the president’s prospective appointments of controversial allies Stephen Moore and Herman Cain to be governors of the Federal Reserve Board are expected to be opposed by Romney — thus providing him the opportunity to be the most visible Republican opposing the Trump agenda.
“I suspect Mitt might have some issues with Moore and Cain,” one Republican senator who requested anonymity told Newsmax last week.
On Thursday, Romney himself fueled talk he would lead a Senate charge against Moore, onetime head of the conservative Club for Growth, and Cain, briefly a major rival of his for the 2012 GOP presidential nomination.
“I would like to see nominees that are economists first and not partisans,” Romney told the Capitol Hill publication Politico, in an obvious reference to the two prospective Fed governors.
Moore was a close advisor to Trump in the 2016 and co-authored a book on how the Republican nominee’s economic agenda would revive the economy.
Cain, formerly chief executive officer of the successful Godfather’s Pizza chain, now heads the “America Fighting Back” political action committee to respond to the President’s enemies.
The nominations of Moore and Cain are widely seen as a strike by Trump to get the Fed (and its Trump-appointed Chairman Jay Powell) to lower interest rates.
With Republicans controlling the Senate by 53 to 47 seats and Democratic lawmakers almost unanimously opposing all Trump nominees, opposition from a high-profile Republican senator such as Romney could spell danger for the nominations of both Cain and Moore.
John Gizzi is chief political columnist and White House correspondent for Newsmax. For more of his reports, Go Here Now.
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