While experts ponder the future of the Republican Party – and traditionalists hope to change the course of the wreckage left by Trump’s insurrection – Washington’s powerful and state activists have already made their choice.
But it will also pose a fundamental question for the Great Party itself. Is another attempt to double popular rage and the Trump base the best way to win back Americans? Especially those in suburban areas who rejected the former president who lost the House, Senate and White House in a single four-year term?
A lively participation by the pro-Trump base is vital to the GOP’s hopes of winning the House in the 2022 half-term exams. But there is also a chance that a flurry of fervently pro-Trump Senate candidates in undecided states could hurt the party’s hopes of overthrowing the small Democratic majority in the House.
Trump is gone, but the party is still his
Across the country, Republican leaders are reacting to Trump’s departure by intensifying the political revolution that transformed the party in his image, censoring and marginalizing those deemed disloyal to a defeated ex-president and twice impeachment.
In a key impeachment test vote this week, 45 Republican senators signaled that they plan Trump to pay no price for inciting a president’s most heinous attack on the U.S. government in history in the Capitol riot.
But the dizzying rise of QAnon supporters as a prominent face of a party surrounded by lies and bizarre propaganda does not appear to be in danger. In fact, Greene was rewarded with an excellent appointment to the committee.
Remnants of the former Republican Party – like George W. Bush’s former aide, Rob Portman – who are unwilling to subscribe to the unbalanced populism that now drives Lincoln’s party, have nowhere to go. The Ohio senator announced this week that he will not run for re-election.
But in Arkansas, former White House press secretary Sarah Sanders is using her wars with the Washington media in her dishonest term as a medal of honor to appeal to the fervently pro-Trump base in a government race.
And in Arizona, Oregon and Pennsylvania, anti-Trump Republicans like Cindy McCain are being purged while Trump supporters take on prominent positions and state officials who have stood firm against the former president’s efforts to overthrow Biden’s election victory are under extreme pressure.
‘Time to get up’
Former Ohio Governor John Kasich, who is now a CNN commentator, said in The Situation Room that the Republican Party needed to act quickly against Greene and compared the leaders’ failure to honor their values with the courage shown by the leader of the Russian opposition Alexey. Navalny.
“They are concerned about losing an election or not winning a majority,” said Kasich. “These people have to stand up and say that this is not our party, we reject that and that is unacceptable to us.”
The warning cited the presidential transition “as well as other perceived complaints fueled by false narratives” as potential catalysts for uprisings. These narratives have been pushed for weeks by Trump and his Republican facilitators in Washington and still find a home in sections of the conservative media.
The Republican Party’s embrace of the late Trump is perfectly logical, even if it leaves Republican lawmakers in awkward positions while letting their crimes against the Constitution pass along with lies that the 2020 election was stolen from him.
The former president has long enjoyed high approval ratings in his party, which protect him from the consequences of his unconstitutional takeover and the failings among Republican leaders that he has intimidated for years. His discomfort when confronted by Washington’s media pales in comparison to the fury of grassroots voters in his country if they break with the former president.
The clarity offered this week – including McCarthy’s pilgrimage to Mar-a-Lago – suggests that party leaders and ordinary members believe that any drop in Trump’s popularity after the Capitol crowd attack was only temporary.
And McCarthy’s strategy makes it clear that he sees Trump’s base as critical to seizing what the story suggests is a great chance to win the House back to the Republican Party in the middle of a new president’s first term in 2022.
He may also be judging that corporate donors who have suspended PAC contributions to Republican Party lawmakers who refused to certify Biden’s electoral victory will return to the fold with the potential prospect of a Republican majority in the House from 2023.
Why the GOP never dumps Trump
Power has always been a key motivating factor behind the Republican Senate’s aching support for the former president and his reluctance to restrict or punish his transgressions when he was in office.
Any senator who wants to avoid a primary challenge has no practical choice but to show total loyalty to Trump.
Florida Senator Marco Rubio, whose presidential dreams were shattered by the former reality star in 2016, has long been seen as the poster boy for a new, more optimistic and inclusive Republican Party. A career path that has now supported him strongly with Trump and marking impeachment as all about “revenge of the radical left” is a fitting embodiment of the transformation that Trump has brought about in the party. It may also have something to do with conversations about a possible primary challenge from Ivanka Trump.
Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell was among the Republicans most disturbed by the attack on his beloved U.S. Senate prompted by Trump in his effort to prevent constitutional transfer of power to Biden.
The Kentucky senator even made it clear that he was considering voting to convict Trump for serious crimes and misdemeanors at his Senate trial. He has not yet said what he will decide. But on Tuesday, McConnell was among the senators who voted unsuccessfully to close the case on the grounds that it is unconstitutional to try a former president who was impeached during his term.
The vote reflected increased confidence among Trump’s acolytes in Washington that he will escape a conviction that would prevent him from running for federal office in the future.
Another major Republican figure, former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley, who deftly engineered his departure from the Trump administration with the blessing of the former president, backed down on his earlier criticisms of Trump after the insurrection. Now, Haley, who is clearly setting the stage for a presidential run in 2024, is painting the president who tried to destroy American democracy as the victim.
“I mean, give the man a break,” Haley told Fox News.