The result is a Republican Party in a struggle with itself over who will determine its way forward – and, more crucially, who should be kept out of the Republican Party’s levers of power. At the moment, the party’s unity is giving way to recriminations, the culmination of the long-running dispute between the party’s bases and its leadership class that was suspended mainly during Trump’s presidency, when few Republicans dared to oppose him.
“Republicans are entering the desert and desperately trying to point the blame,” said Erick Erickson, the conservative commentator and radio host. “They will have to make room for each other or let the Democrats run over them in the middle tests.”
Erickson says the division in the party is not just philosophical, but literal, with both sides having their own strongholds within the Republican Party’s infrastructure.
“The pre-Trump establishment now largely runs the party’s policy-making arm, and the Trump wing controls the state party’s arms,” he said. “It cannot last and have the party win.”
For Congressman Adam Kinzinger, a six-term Illinois congressman and one of only 10 Republicans in the House who voted for impeachment, the party is in the middle of a difficult struggle over its own identity.
“I think we are in a battle,” Kinzinger told Jim Sciutto on Monday. “And it may be a battle that really needs to happen for our party to say, what do we stand for? Not when it comes to politics, but above all, are we aspirants or are we a party that feeds on fear and division?”
Sanders enters, Portman leaves
Two announcements on Monday reflected how long the party’s Trump wing remains in the Republican Party driver’s seat – and that members of the pre-Trump establishment are disappearing.
“A trusted confidant of the president, Sarah advised him on everything from press and communication strategy to personal and political,” the statement said. “For two and a half years, Sarah worked closely with the president, struggling with the media, working with legislators and CEOs and accompanying the president on all trips abroad, including dozens of meetings with foreign leaders.” Trump endorsed Sanders on Monday, saying in a statement that she “is a warrior who will always fight for the people of Arkansas and will do what is right, not what is politically correct”.
Portman’s decision to leave “a safe place tells you that he doesn’t think much will improve in Washington, and we are unlikely to have a majority in 1922,” a strategist close to Republican fund-raisers told CNN.
“We need all the moderates we can,” said a second Republican strategist familiar with Ohio Republican politics. “He is exactly the type we want and will now be replaced by someone more ‘conservative’ for ideology or positioning.”
McConnell and Cheney face negative reaction
But “more conservative” – or at least more dedicated to Trump – is exactly what those most loyal to the former president want.
Cheney, the president of the House Republican conference, was among the House Republicans who voted for impeachment earlier this month. For this vote, some of Trump’s most strident allies at the GOP conference are threatening to remove her from her leadership role. And one of them, Representative Matt Gaetz of Florida, is going to Cheney, Wyoming’s home state this week to speak out against his vote.
McConnell, for his part, only indicated his openness to vote to condemn, but that was enough to increase pressure from some Republican colleagues. And in two recent Senate speeches, the Republican leader sharply criticized Trump’s actions around the attack and denounced the lie propagated by the president that the 2020 election was stolen from him.
All of this made McConnell a target for pro-Trump voices in conservative media.
“Mitch McConnell, if you’re not going to fight, we deserve better,” Fox News presenter Sean Hannity said last week. “You can go back to representing the people of Kentucky and leave someone who knows how to lead, to lead.”
Many Republicans with potential ambitions for the White House are therefore acting with caution.
Senators Marco Rubio and Tom Cotton, for example, did not object to counting electoral votes, as did their other ambitious colleagues, Senators Ted Cruz and Josh Hawley. But Trump remains popular with Republican voters, and most polls show little appetite among them to accuse Trump.
So both Rubio and Cotton, along with other senators who may be looking to run for president, have already indicated that they will not support Trump’s sentencing – a potential protection against primary voters who may be counting on loyalty to Trump as an asset in a presidential term. named.
Trump’s party in the states too
In some states, party committees and local activists have attacked those who did not defend Trump enough. Supported by Trump himself, Republicans in Georgia harassed their own elected officials, including Governor Brian Kemp and Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, for not trying to overturn the election.
In a statement following the January 13 House vote on impeachment, the Texas Republican Party called the vote “frivolous and cruel”. And last week, the Oregon Republican Party released a long, fictional statement calling the Republican Party’s 10 votes for Trump’s impeachment “betrayal.”
Over the weekend, the Arizona Republican Party, which had just re-elected its pro-Trump president Kelli Ward, passed resolutions censoring three of the state’s most prominent Republicans: Cindy McCain, former Senator Jeff Flake and Governor Doug Ducey.
What happened in Arizona – a former Republican state that Trump lost and where Democrats are on the rise – worries Republican Party activists like Michael Steel, a former aide to mayor John Boehner.
“If you tell the people of Arizona that your successful, conservative two-term governor is somehow a problem, you are condemning yourself to minority status,” Steel told CNN.
Erickson agrees.
“A party that is not big enough for Dick Cheney’s daughter, the husband of Trump’s transport secretary, the wife of John McCain and the governors of Arizona and Georgia is not a party big enough to win,” he said. he.
Fredreka Schouten, Jim Acosta and Annie Grayer of CNN contributed to this report.