Two very different interviews on Sunday morning news illustrated the Republican Party’s impeachment acquittal identity crisis after impeachment.
With Trump now out of office, banned from social media and recently out of a trial in which a bipartisan majority of senators voted for his sentencing, the Republican Party is polarized.
Some Republicans finally want to push the party beyond Trumpism and its undemocratic impulses, while others – perhaps more attentive to Trump’s continued dominance over the Republican base – are using his absolution as an occasion to get him more involved.
On Sunday, the anti-Trump faction was represented by Senator Bill Cassidy (R-LA). After four years of loyalty to Trump, Cassidy surprisingly joined six other Republican senators on Saturday and voted to condemn Trump in an impeachment article accusing him of inciting the January 6 uprising. And although Cassidy has already been censored by the Louisiana Republican Party for cheating on the former president, he indicated during an interview on ABC’s This week that he doesn’t regret it.
“I think I can already represent a majority opinion,” said Cassidy, minimizing censorship. “I voted to support and defend the Constitution … the Republican Party is more than one person.”
Despite having been censored by LAGOP, Senator Cassidy (R) says he does not regret voting for Trump’s condemnation: “I can already represent a majority opinion … [but] I voted to support and defend the Constitution … the Republican Party is more than just one person. ” pic.twitter.com/y0dlBqpMVx
– Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) February 14, 2021
On the pro-Trump side is Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC). Graham, of course, was one of Trump’s most loyal supporters during his tenure, but that changed momentarily after the January 6 uprising, when Graham delivered a speech distancing himself from Trump.
“Don’t count on me. That’s enough.” Graham said.
Graham quickly changed his mind about this stance, traveling with Trump during his last trip as president and shamelessly defending Trump on TV.
If Graham’s appearance on Sunday morning in Fox News Sunday is an indication, your loyalty to the ex-president is stronger than ever.
“Donald Trump is the most vibrant member of the Republican Party,” Graham said, distancing himself from Nikki Haley’s comments about Trump not having a future in the Republican Party. “The Trump movement is alive and well … all I can say is that the Republican Party’s most powerful force is President Trump.”
Those comments came at the end of an interview that began with Graham suggesting that Republicans would go so far as to retaliate for Trump’s second impeachment, Vice President Kamala Harris’s impeachment if he resumes the House next year.
Both Cassidy and Graham were comfortably re-elected for new six-year terms last November, but each legislator is using his term differently at a time when principles and politics are in tension in the Republican Party.
Cassidy is using his job security to distance himself from a president he considers violating his oath, but Graham appears to be calculating that Trumpism represents the Republican Party’s best bet to retake one or both chambers of Congress next year.
This was apparent at the end of Graham’s last interview with Fox News, when he basically supported Lara Trump – Donald Trump’s daughter-in-law – to fill a North Carolina Senate that was being vacated by Senator Richard Burr, who surprisingly joined Cassidy at the camp of former Trump loyalists who voted to condemn Trump.
“North Carolina, I think the biggest winner in this whole impeachment trial is Lara Trump,” said Graham. “My dear friend Richard Burr, whom I like and have been friends with for a long time, has just named Lara Trump as the right nominee for the Senate seat in North Carolina to replace him if she runs. And I’m sure I’ll be with her if she runs, because I think she represents the future of the Republican Party. “
A third Republican – Maryland Governor Larry Hogan, who was an outspoken critic of Trump – argued on CNN on Sunday morning that Cassidy’s position should represent the future of the party.
“I think the final chapter on Donald Trump and where the Republican Party is going has yet to be written, and I think we will have a real battle for the soul of the Republican Party in the next two years,” Hogan said. “Are we going to be a party that cannot win the national elections again, that loses the presidency, the Chamber and the Senate in four years?”
Hogan is right to point out that the two election cycles after Trump’s 2016 victory over Hillary Clinton saw Republicans lose power in a way that often served as a rebuke to Trump’s broader appeal. But the former president remains very popular with the Republican Party base – a survey conducted just before the impeachment trial found Trump’s approval rating among Republicans as early as the 1980s.
Therefore, while Cassidy’s position for democracy is commendable, and Hogan’s optimism remarkable, it is an open question whether there is a place for people like them in such a party complicit in Trump’s authoritarian attempt.