Trump’s Republican Support Erodes Ahead of Impeachment Vote

Republicans offered only a modest rebuke when US President Donald Trump said there were “very good people” on both sides of a white supremacist rally. They stayed in line when Trump was caught pressuring a foreign leader and later defended his handling of a deadly pandemic.

But with sudden force, the wall of Republican support that has allowed Trump to weather a seemingly endless series of crises is beginning to erode.

Trump’s weakened position among his own party will come into greater focus on Wednesday (Thursday NZT) when the House of Representatives is expected to impeach the president for inciting unrest on the US Capitol last week. A handful of Republicans have already said they will join the effort, a number that could grow as the vote approaches.

The choice Republicans face is not just about the immediate fate of Trump, who has only seven days left in his presidency. It’s about whether the party’s elected leaders are ready to outrun Trump, who remains popular with the Republican Party but is now toxic in much of Washington.

How they proceed could determine whether the party is still viable in the next election or whether it disengages in a way that could limit its relevance.

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“We are at the moment where we are seeing a fracture, a rupture, due to the unprecedented situation: sedition, violence, death,” said Steve Schmidt, a longtime Republican strategist who left the party for Trump. .

The staggering nature of the deadly insurrection and Trump’s role in pushing it forward has shaken many lawmakers. Representative Liz Cheney, the No. 3 Republican in the House, gave grassroots conservatives the green light to abandon Trump in a scathing statement Tuesday night (local time).

“There has never been a greater betrayal by a president of the United States in charge and his oath to the Constitution,” he charged.

While surprising, the rapid developments do not guarantee that Trump will be forced out of office before the inauguration of Democrat Joe Biden on January 20. The timing of a Senate trial is unclear and could extend to Biden’s presidency.

But for the first time, there are real signs that a significant faction of Republicans wants to purge Trump from his party.

Already, three members of Trump’s cabinet have resigned in protest. Former Attorney General Bill Barr, who left the White House less than a month ago, accused his former boss of “treason in office.”

It took almost a week for Vice President Mike Pence, whose relationship with Trump has deteriorated considerably since he and his family were forced into hiding during the Capitol siege, to publicly declare that he would not invoke the 25th Amendment to the Constitution to remove Trump. office.

The president still enjoys some level of Republican support. Rep. Jim Jordan, one of Trump’s top allies who was just honored this week at the White House, refused Tuesday to admit that President-elect Joe Biden won the election – the same provable falsehood that sparked the riots.

Trump left the White House fortress for the first time since the riots for a trip to the wall his administration built along the Texas border. Upon leaving Washington, he was careful to insist that “we do not want violence,” but denied any responsibility for the insurrection.

Once he got to the border, his comments to a small crowd were quite silent. In the end, he spoke for just 21 minutes and spent less than 45 minutes on the ground in what was expected to be the last trip of his presidency.

Before leaving, he offered an ominous warning to the Democrats leading the impeachment to remove him from office: “Be careful what you wish for.”

That veiled threat came as the nation, and members of Congress, braced themselves for the potential for more violence before Biden’s inauguration. The FBI warned this week of plans for armed protests in all 50 state capitals and in Washington.

Capitol security officials made the extraordinary decision to require members of Congress to go through metal detectors to enter the House chamber starting Tuesday, although some Republicans resisted the new rule.

It’s unclear whether the chaos in Washington poses an existential threat to the party, but it almost certainly threatens to undermine the short-term political goals of the Republican Party.

Several major corporations, many of them trusted Republican donors, have vowed to stop sending political donations to any of the 147 Republicans who perpetuated Trump’s false claims of voter fraud by voting to reject Biden’s victory last week.

The fundraising challenge comes at a bad time for the Republican Party. History suggests that the Republican Party, as a minority party in Washington, should regain control of the House or Senate in 2022.

At the same time, a collection of ambitious Republicans is trying to position themselves to run for the White House in 2024. They are also grappling with Trump’s legacy.

One of them, Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan, reminded reporters Tuesday that he condemned Trump’s presidency from the start.

“I have been in the same place that I have been for the entire four years. A lot of people have just changed their position, ”Hogan said, vowing not to leave the Republican Party. “I don’t want to leave the party and let these people who did a hostile takeover four years ago take over.”

Despite Hogan’s confidence, a significant portion of the Republican Party’s political base remains deeply loyal to the president and has already shown a willingness to attack anyone, especially Republicans, who is not. That helps explain why two other 2024 prospects, Senators Ted Cruz of Texas and Josh Hawley of Missouri, voted to reject Biden’s victory last week, even after the uprising.

“Republican leaders don’t know how to move forward,” said Republican pollster Frank Luntz. “Everyone is afraid that Donald Trump will tell people to come after them, but they also realize that they are losing the center of America. They are trapped “.