NEW YORK (AP) – The Republican Party still belongs to Donald Trump.
After he incited a deadly riot at the US Capitol last month, the Republican Party considered purging the rule-breaking ex-president. But in the end, only seven of the 50 Senate Republicans voted to condemn Trump in his historic second impeachment trial on Saturday.
For Trump supporters, absolution offers a kind of justification and a new connection to the ex-president’s ardent base. And for Trump’s Republican Party antagonists, it’s another alarming sign that the party is leaning even further in a dangerous direction, with little desire to reconnect with Trump-alienated moderates, women and higher education voters.
Ultimately, the resolution of the impeachment trial brings up a split in the Republican Party that party leaders, donors and voters will have to contend with as they try to regain control of Congress next year and intend to retake the White House in 2024.
This tension was evident shortly after the vote. After supporting Trump’s acquittal, Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., Delivered a speech that echoed some of the points that Democratic impeachment managers emphasized when seeking Trump’s sentencing.
The former president, said McConnell, was “practically and morally responsible for causing the events” that led to the insurrection. But he argued that there was no constitutional basis for the Senate to condemn Trump now that he is out of office, a procedural point adopted by many in the Republican Party.
The history books will show that 10 members of the president’s party in the House and seven others in the Senate believed that Trump’s behavior was notorious enough to justify the conviction – and even a lifetime ban on holding a future position. Never before have so many members of a president’s party voted to remove him.
But by most objective measures, Trump’s control over the GOP and its future remains firm.
Gallup reported last month that Trump’s approval among self-styled Republicans was 82%. And more recently, Monmouth University has found that 72% of Republicans continue to believe Trump’s false claims that President Joe Biden won the November election just because of widespread electoral fraud.
So that there is no doubt about Trump’s strength, House Republicans voted overwhelmingly last week to defend a stubborn loyal to Trump, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., Even after evidence emerged that she had repeatedly embraced violence, fanaticism and conspiracy theories on social media issues.
A few days after minority leader in the House, Kevin McCarthy, called Trump responsible for the violent attack, McCarthy moved and made a personal visit to Trump’s Florida property to ensure there was no lingering animosity.
Of the seven Republicans who voted to condemn Trump on Saturday, only one faces re-election in the next four years. In fact, in Trump’s Republican Party, there are very few willing to oppose him if they harbor future political ambitions.
One, the 2024 prospectus Nikki Haley, who was the US ambassador to the United Nations under Trump, drew attention this week after telling the Politician that Trump’s role in the January 6 attack essentially disqualified him from running for office again. .
“He fell so far,” said Haley. “He followed a path that he shouldn’t have followed, and we shouldn’t have followed him, and we shouldn’t have heard him. And we cannot let that happen again. “
Another Republican presidential perspective, Senator Ben Sasse, R-Neb., Voted to condemn Trump on Saturday, declaring that Trump’s “lies” about widespread electoral fraud have put “the vice president’s life at risk” and are “dangerously approaching a bloody constitutional crisis”.
Although Sasse may run for president in 2024, he will not face Republican voters in the Nebraska primary again, unless he opts for re-election in 2026.
Similarly, Republican Sen. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana faced censorship from his state party after voting to condemn Trump. But he will not face voters again until 2026, so he is relatively isolated from the political consequences.
Despite McConnell’s criticism, Trump’s most vocal Republican opponents at this point are likely to consist of a collection of retired Republicans on cable news and a “Never Trump” movement struggling with its own existential challenges.
The Lincoln Project, perhaps the most important and best-funded Republican anti-Trump group, is coming out of a tumultuous week after revelations that its leaders knew about several allegations of sexual misconduct against a co-founder several months before publicly acknowledging them.
The organization’s self-styled “senior leader”, veteran Republican strategist Steve Schmidt, stepped down on the eve of the Senate impeachment vote, the day after the Lincoln Project announced plans to bring in an outside investigator.
The consequences threaten to undermine the organization’s fundraising appeal and influence, even as the super PAC works to expand its reach through a popular podcast and expanding video streaming channel that has attracted more than 4 million views in the last month.
Even before the crisis, co-founder Reed Galen acknowledged that Trumpism was winning.
“The authoritarian side of the Republican Party is the dominant side,” he said. “They have the momentum. For now, they have the money. “
Sarah Longwell, a Republican strategist who leads the anti-Trump group known as Defending Democracy Together, said that “what the past two months have shown is that if Donald Trump was a cancer in the country and in the party, he has metastasized.”
“I thought we could get past him,” she said. “But now I don’t think so.”
Still, the Republican Party faces enormous political risks if its leaders continue to embrace Trump and his kind of policy-breaking policy.
Several Republican-friendly companies have already pledged to stop giving money to Trump’s allies in Congress, cutting a critical revenue stream as Republicans hope to regain majorities in the House and Senate in next year’s midterm elections. .
Trump’s critics on both parties promise to ensure that the business community and voters don’t forget what the former president and his allies have done.
“Let’s remind voters that Republicans were willing to neglect their government oaths out of loyalty to a man, and that a man was more important than his constituents, more important than the United States Constitution, more important than democracy that we have in this great nation, ”said the chairman of the Democratic National Committee, Jaime Harrison.
But Trump himself is not going away. Immediately after his acquittal, he issued a written statement promising to resurface “soon”.
“Our historic, patriotic and beautiful movement for Make America Great Again has just begun,” said Trump. “In the coming months, I have a lot to share with you and I look forward to continuing our incredible journey together to achieve American greatness for all of our people.”