For Republicans fearful of a Donald Trump presidency, Mitt Romney was their voice and conscience. The GOP’s 2012 presidential nominee became the unyielding face of the resistance to the party’s 2016 nominee.

Then Trump won.

One by one, Republicans who stood up to Trump or questioned his statements and antics have made a pilgrimage to Trump Tower to kiss the president-elect’s ring, or joined his administration, or decided uncharacteristically to just keep their mouths shut.

And at long last Tuesday night, the figurehead of the “Never Trump” movement also capitulated. After an intimate dinner with Trump of frog legs and diver scallops at a fine Manhattan restaurant (in a Trump-owned building, naturally), Romney publicly acquiesced.

In an apparent attempt to secure Trump’s trust in him as a possible secretary of state, Romney lavished praise on the president-elect: Trump’s dinner company was “enlightening and interesting and engaging” and his transition appointments give him “increasing hope that President-elect Trump is the very man who can lead us to that better future.”