In the Republican Party, the post-Trump era lasted a week

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As pundits reflect on the GOP’s future – and traditionalists hope to change course by breaking out of the wreckage left by Trump’s insurgency – powerful Washington actors and state activists have already made their choice .

But it will also pose a fundamental question for the Grand Old Party itself. Is another doubling of the fury of the base and the Trump base the best way to win the Americans back? Especially those in the suburbs who rejected the ex-president who lost the House, the Senate and the White House in a single four-year term?

Enthusiastic participation by the pro-Trump base is vital to the GOP’s hopes of winning the House midway through 2022. But there’s also a chance that a flurry of staunch pro-Trump Senate candidates in swing states could undermine the party’s hopes of overthrowing the narrow Democratic majority in the chamber.

Trump is gone but the party is still his

Most House Republicans shut up on Marjorie Taylor Greene's violent comments as Democrats condemn them

Across the country, Republican leaders are responding to Trump’s exit by stepping up the political revolution that has transformed the party in his image, censoring and marginalizing those deemed disloyal to a defeated and twice deposed former president.

In a key impeachment vote this week, 45 GOP senators signaled that they expect Trump to pay no price for inciting a president’s most heinous assault on the U.S. government in the United States. story during the Capitol riot.

McCarthy, who humbly returned to his earlier lukewarm criticism of Trump, traveled to Florida for an audience as he sought to make amends to the former palace ruler in exile.
In another sign of the GOP’s future course, Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene was not censored by her party after CNN’s KFile reported that she had expressed support in recent years for the assassinations of Democratic leaders before go to Congress. McCarthy plans to discuss with the MP what her spokesperson in a statement Wednesday night called “deeply disturbing” comments. Axios was the first to report McCarthy’s statement and plans to speak with Greene.

But the skyrocketing QAnon membership as the prominent face of a party gripped by lies and extravagant propaganda does not appear to be in danger. In fact, Greene was rewarded with an assignment on the plum committee.

Alarmed by his party’s divisions, McCarthy ordered his troops to “cut this bullshit” and focus on Democrats, CNN reported Wednesday. It is not clear whether his warning applies to pro-Trump Representative Matt Gaetz from Florida, who travels to Wyoming to criticize GOP House Leader No.3 Liz Cheney, who voted to impeach Trump, over his own land.

Leftovers of the old GOP – like George W. Bush’s former aide Rob Portman – who don’t want to join the deranged populism that now drives Lincoln’s party have nowhere to go. The Ohio senator announced this week that he would not stand for re-election.

But in Arkansas, former White House press secretary Sarah Sanders carries her wars with the Washington media in her dishonest tenure as a badge of honor to appeal to the staunch pro-Trump base in a race to governor.

And in Arizona, Oregon, and Pennsylvania, anti-Trump Republicans like Cindy McCain are being purged as Trump loyalists take prominent positions and state officials who have resisted the The former president’s efforts to overturn Biden’s election victory are under extreme pressure.

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Former Ohio Governor John Kasich, who is now a CNN commentator, said in “The Situation Room” that the GOP must act quickly against Greene and compared the leaders’ failure to honor its values ​​with the courage shown by detained Russian opposition leader Alexey. Navalny.

“They fear losing an election or not winning a majority,” Kasich said. “These people have to stand up and say that this is not our party, we disavow it and it is unacceptable to us.”

The lesson of the Trump era is that where there is a choice within the GOP between its values ​​and its power, power always wins. But the party’s descent into the sewer of electoral lies comes with a growing price for the rest of the nation. The Department of Homeland Security on Wednesday issued a rare bulletin of threats related to domestic terrorism, warning of the potential for violence from extremists emboldened by the attack on the U.S. Capitol.

The warning cited the presidential transition “and other perceived grievances 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 their way into sections of the conservative media.

The GOP’s adoption of the late Trump makes perfect sense, even if it leaves Republican lawmakers in awkward positions as they let his crimes against the Constitution slip away with lies that the 2020 election was stolen from him.

The former president has long enjoyed a high approval rating in his party, which has protected him from the consequences of his unconstitutional takeovers and failures among Republican leaders whom he has intimidated for years. Their discomfort with the Washington media is pale compared to the fury of grassroots voters at home if they break with the ex-president.

Still, a CNN / SSRS poll released just before he left found that 48% of Republicans wanted to quit Trump while 47% hoped he would continue to be seen as the party leader.

The clarity offered this week – including McCarthy’s pilgrimage to Mar-a-Lago – suggests that party leaders and grassroots members believe that any decline in Trump’s popularity after the mob attack on Capitol Hill does was only temporary.

And McCarthy’s strategy makes it clear that he views Trump’s base as key to grasping what history suggests as a strong chance to win back the House for the GOP in the middle of a new president’s first term in 2022.

He may also be ruling that corporate donors who halted PAC contributions to GOP lawmakers who refused to certify Biden’s election victory will return to the fold with the potential prospect of a Republican House majority. from 2023.

Why the GOP never throws Trump

McCarthy to visit ex-president in Florida, showing position in post-Trump Republican party

Power has always been a key motivator behind the Senate GOP’s painful support for the ex-president and its reluctance to coerce or punish his transgressions while in office.

Any senator who wants to avoid a main challenge has no practical choice but to demonstrate complete loyalty to Trump.

Florida Senator Marco Rubio, whose presidential dreams were dashed by the former reality TV star in 2016, has long been seen as the poster child for a more optimistic and inclusive new GOP. A career trajectory that now places him firmly on Trump’s side and calls the impeachment “revenge on the radical left” is a fitting personification of the transformation Trump has brought about within the party. It may also have something to do with the gossip about a possible main challenge from Ivanka Trump.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell was one of the Republicans most distraught over the attack on his beloved US Senate prompted by Trump in his efforts to thwart the constitutional transfer of power to Biden.

The Kentucky senator even made it known that he was considering voting to convict Trump of serious crimes and misdemeanors during his Senate trial. He has not yet said what he will decide. But on Tuesday, McConnell was among senators who voted, unsuccessfully, to dismiss the case on the questionable grounds that it is unconstitutional to try a former president who was impeached during his tenure.

The vote reflected the growing confidence of Trump’s henchmen in Washington that he will escape a conviction that would prevent him from running for federal election in the future.

Another key Republican figure, former US Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley, who skillfully organized her exit from the Trump administration with the blessing of the former president, reconsidered her tame criticism of Trump after the insurgency . Now Haley, who clearly sets the stage for a presidential race in 2024, portrays the president who tried to destroy American democracy as the victim.

“I mean, give the man a break,” Haley told Fox News.

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