Former Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney has revealed who he believes is destined to lead the Republicans into the next election in 2028.
In an interview with CNN’s Jake Tapper on State of the Union Sunday, the Utah senator said he believes vice-president-elect JD Vance will take over the mantle from President-elect Donald Trump.
“If you were to ask me who the nominee will be in 2028 I think it’d be JD, Vance,” Romney said. “He’s smart, well-spoken, part of the MAGA movement.”
Tapper pointed out how Romney had been “pretty harsh” about the Ohio Senator a few months ago when he said he didn’t respect him.
“I’m not going to rehash history, and we’ve worked together in the Senate since then,” he said.
Romney also claimed that Trump’s plans on policy did not match voter concerns, despite storming to a big electoral win in November.
“Will the party need to change? The Republican Party has become the party of the working class, middle class voter, and you got to give Donald Trump credit for having done that and taken that away from the Democrats,” he said.
“One of the challenges in my party is that our policies do not necessarily line up with the interests of our voters, and so there will be some reorientation that’s going to be necessary in my party.”
The former presidential candidate reiterated that it was the Democrats who ignored voters’ main concerns during the campaign this year.
“I don’t know how they recover,” he said. “They have lost their base. Union guys and gals have left the Democratic Party and are voting Republican, and the Democratic Party is seen not as rich people, but as college professors and woke scolds, and that’s not an attractive feature.”
“How could they have so badly misread the public mood? Did they not understand how upset people are about inflation? But President Biden was out there saying, ‘Bidenomics.’ Like, really? Do you not see what people are seeing when they go to the grocery store?”
Despite being a fierce critic of Donald Trump, Romney said he was “willing to live” with the fact many often disagreed with his views on the state of the Republican Party.
But he remained silent on who he voted for this year as he joked that the secret ballot was a “wonderful” thing.
He also admitted he was wrong about his predictions that Trump would not win the election. Americans will have to wait another four years to find out if he is wrong about his Republican Party presidential candidate prediction.
