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After four years of a rule-breaking government, Donald Trump appears close to doing the one thing that observers have long predicted but has yet to happen: split the Republican party.
With Trump looking at the prospect of just a few more weeks in the White House, significant segments of the party are finally breaking with a president to whom they have thus far shown almost unwavering loyalty. Furthermore, the revival of Trump’s division in his own party has even managed to unite warring factions among his opponents.
Responding Wednesday night to the president’s explosive threat to veto the $ 900 billion Covid relief and stimulus bill, Democratic leaders and members of the otherwise progressive House “Squad” pitted against each other, welcomed Trump’s demand to increase direct payments to individual Americans.
“Let’s do it!” President Nancy Pelosi said.
“We can approve checks for $ 2k this week,” wrote Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
Somewhere on Capitol Hill, presumably, the Republican Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell buried his head in his hands.
‘Send me a proper invoice, or else’
Predictions that Trump will tear apart and divide the Republican Party have been widespread since 2015, when he tore apart and divided, and won, the race for the presidential nomination. While the party remains intact, and an official split will come as a surprise, it has now turned into an infighting, Trump loyalists fighting for the lost cause of a second term, while others seek to adjust to life again in the US. opposition.
Trump maintains strong control over the far-right Republican base, over a large part of the House delegation that owes its seats to that base and to influential senators. The penalty for apostasy is clear: a right-wing primary or, as is rumored in the case of Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, a challenge from Trump’s own daughter.
But in contrast to the zeal of the Maga-led legions, in the Senate the party establishment has now rebuffed Trump’s increasingly savage attempts to cling to power while negotiating the Covid deal that fueled the extraordinary display of presidential petulance from the party. Tuesday night from the White House podium. .
In his video message, Trump lamented the spending commitments in the aid deal and demanded that Congress “send me a proper bill, or else the next administration will have to deliver a Covid aid package. And maybe that administration is me. “
It won’t, even if Trump’s allies in the House and Senate go ahead with the planned challenges for the electoral college result in Congress on January 6. The Democrats who control the House will make sure the result is certified there, while McConnell and his deputies secure its approval in the Senate.
But if such challenges can only be performative, they will be politically beneficial to all except the Republican establishment, which will help overcome them. Trump’s refusal to accept defeat, not to mention the fierce fire he and his allies have directed against McConnell since the senator acknowledged Joe Biden’s victory, is hurting the president’s own party.
One day before the electoral college result is certified, two runoff elections in Georgia will decide control of the Senate. Early voting has started. McConnell, seeking to cling to the party’s best hope of thwarting Biden’s agenda, needs a united front. Such is Trump’s refusal to accept party discipline or political reality, that it has become impossible.
Georgia’s two sitting senators, Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue, have joined Trump. That means supporting his claim that the presidential election was rigged, which the party establishment fears could stifle Republican turnout.
‘A different course’
On CNN last weekend, Utah senator and 2012 presidential nominee Mitt Romney, a frequent critic of Trump, was asked if he “still recognized the Republican party.”
“The party has taken a different tack than I obviously knew when I was younger,” Romney said, adding that his Republican party represented leadership abroad while “balancing the budget” at home.
“And we believed that character was essential in the leaders we elected. We have deviated from that. I don’t see us going back to that for a long time. “
The comment on the character was timely. Romney went on to describe a battle to succeed Trump at the top of the party that promises to be like life for Thomas Hobbes: ugly and brutal, albeit long-term rather than short-term.
“When I look at the 2024 contenders,” Romney said, “most of them are trying to look as much like Donald Trump as possible. Although I must admit that his style and flair, so to speak, is difficult to duplicate. “
Out of necessity, ambitious senators like Josh Hawley of Missouri, Tom Cotton of Arkansas and Ted Cruz of Texas would have taken it as a compliment, but also a warning. Trump is reportedly likely to announce his own bid for 2024 shortly after his impeachment.
“I represent a very small portion of the Republican party today,” Romney continued, “but you know that everyone has to stand up for what they believe in. And I think my colleagues are doing what they think is right. “
For some Republicans, Trump has already proven too much.
Outside of Congress, Project Lincoln’s Never Trumpers, the Bulwark, and other groups fought for Biden, while former Republican voters helped turn Georgia and Arizona blue. Within Congress, some have taken a position. The common way out is to retire, but two members of the Michigan House, Justin Amash last year and Paul Mitchell this one, found the courage to publicly leave their party.
Such numbers are small. The party remains in one piece. It remains to be seen if this continues. In the fight that is brewing, those who are against Trump are not ready to resign.
Writing for the Washington Post in November, long before Trump’s refusal to admit defeat was morphed into martial law considerations, conservative columnist Jennifer Rubin said that the United States effectively has “three parties now: the Democratic party, the party. undemocratic Trump and the Pro-Republican Party of Democracy ”.
Rubin advocated a bipartisan effort to restore balance, writing: “Once the undemocratic Trump party is sidelined, we could have a functional government again. The Democratic Party and the Republican Party for Democracy should join their heads and devise a strategy to achieve this, quickly, and certainly before 2024 ”.
Romney has disappointed Democrats before, especially over the appointment of Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett. But he seems ready for the fight.
“I think I’m more effective in the Republican Party and I keep fighting for the things I believe in,” he said when asked if he would leave. “I think that ultimately the Republican Party will go back to the roots that have been formed over the last century.
“Hopefully people will recognize that we must take a different course than we are taking now.”
