On Tuesday, 45 Republican senators – all but five members of the GOP conference – voted unconstitutional to execute a former president, but the Senate will not convict him. If the Republican Party seems to be at a crossroads over its future after Trump, it now seems to be in which direction to travel.
“There is some support for this president more than during the election,” said Don Thrasher, chairman of the Republican Party of the County of Kentucky. He recently voted to disrespect Kentuckian minority leader Mitch McConnell for what Thrasher calls “honor” in a debate over the certification of election results.
Of the zeal for Trump after the president, he said, “I’ve never seen anything like it.”
However, dedication to Trump costs a lot. The party is in danger of tying its future to a one-term president, whose deeply polarizing style has cost the party both the House and the Senate during his four years in office. And he blew a hole in the suburban foundation of the party that could be irreparable.
Trump’s place in the party’s landscape seemed less certain after his defeat in November and the uprising in the Capitol that he helped with his false allegations of a stolen election. Polls suggest Trump’s influence over the IDP has begun to fade.
But the GOP is still a party in which Trump’s approval stands at about 80 percent. For Trump loyalists, Trump’s second accusation was taken less than an accusation of the former president’s behavior as a cause of rallying around him – a martyr for an aggrieved populist base.
“There are 74 million people who voted for him,” said Charlie Gerow, a Republican strategist in Pennsylvania. “You’re not going to get a mass exodus … At grassroots level, he’s very, very popular, and I think the party as a whole understands that he has to include Trump enthusiasts to be a majority party. . ”
The real question now may not be how long Trump waits over the GOP, but whether there is room for someone else under his shadow.
In the state of Washington, several provincial chairmen of the Republican Party on Monday called for the resignation of the Republican Rep. Dan Newhouse, who voted in favor. The Oregon Republican Party formally condemned ‘The betrayal’ of the ten members of the House who voted to accuse. Arizona Republicans this weekend, despite forming their party during the Trump era, voted to condemn Cindy McCain, former Senator Jeff Flake and Gov. Doug Ducey, while ousting a Trump loyalist, Kelli Ward , elected chairman of the state party.
And in Wyoming – a state that scored 70 percent for Trump in November – the Republican Party of Carbon County voted to condemn state representative Liz Cheney for her vote to accuse Trump.
Carbon County President Joey Correnti Trump in his “top five” presidents of all time.
Regarding the GOP’s attitude towards the former president, he said: “If you are going to enjoy the benefit of the brand, you are riding with the brand.”
In recent weeks, it appears that the party’s ruling class has taken note of the base’s continued loyalty to Trump – and the impact it could have on their own political prospects. The Republican leader of the House, Kevin McCarthy, said after the uprising at the Capitol that Trump bears some responsibility for the riot. But then the California Republican said “everyone in this country has some responsibility,” and he otherwise made an effort to restore his relationship with Trump.
The Republican Party’s top presidential candidates in 2024 are also not keen on crossing Trump. Former UN Ambassador Nikki Haley has singled out Trump after the riots in the Capitol and told Republican National Committee members that his “actions since election day will be strictly judged by history.”
More recently, on Fox News, she said: “I do not even think there is a basis for accusation.”
“At some point, I mean, give the man a break,” Haley said. “I mean, go on.”
Many traditionalist Republicans hope this is exactly what GOP voters will do. Republicans’ turnout was more successful than Trump’s in the November election. Many Republican voters are voting for candidates who are not named Trump – and are not worried about the local party activities that are stirring up more moderate Republicans.
“The base of Trump’s people, that is, Trump’s wing men and wing women, will never leave him,” said Barrett Marson, a Republican political strategist in Arizona. But while “Trump still has a hold on the core of Republicans,” Marson said, “in the larger Republican Party, that’s not the case.”
Most of the Trump’s, activist wing of the party still controls many state and county party operations. And the one-time rallies unleashed during the Trump era have metastasized within the party.
Millions of Republicans bought Trump’s lie that the November election was stolen from him, with a large majority of Republicans saying after the election that they did not think it was free or fair. In Hawaii, a Republican Party official recently resigned after posting tweets showing subscribers to the QAnon conspiracy theory. The Republican Party in Texas still uses the slogan “We are the storm”, despite criticism of the phrase’s links to QAnon [The party has denied a connection].
Sean Walsh, a Republican strategist who worked in the Reagan and George HW Bush White Houses, suggested that Trump’s move to the party was so great that “you have to facilitate Donald Trump.”
‘“Many of the parties are quietly hoping for him to leave, and they can move on to the future,” Walsh said.
However, he said: ‘It is decided at such a low margin in the election that you should not anger too many activists for where it has a significant and life-changing impact on your future election if you are a politician. . Darwin and politics are very similar: you have to survive to keep going. And you can not survive if you go hard on Trump. ”
It was the lesson of the past three weeks for Republicans that toppled Trump and faced accusations from the party. Trump, despite leaving Washington, remains close to the center of the GOP political universe.
Solomon Yue, the Oregon Republican National Committee member who led the resolution in his state to condemn the ten indictment-supporting Republics of the House, described the Republicans ‘pro-accusation vote as a lack of courage, which he said’ not made from chickens —. ”
Like other Trump supporters, Yue suspects that Trump’s position in the party will only improve over time, as the Republicans who voted for Trump shy away from the Democratic agenda advanced by Joe Biden.
In Kentucky, where McConnell is the godfather of the state party, he nonetheless faced the prospect of a resolution on Saturday urging him to oppose the indictment. While the state party put it out of action, the mere challenge of its authority raised eyebrows. And he continues to take levels at the provincial level, where Thrasher said he has coordinated with other provincial chairmen on a benchmark to punish him. The president of a neighboring country party told Thrasher one of his constituents, an elderly woman who supports Trump, asked if they could leave McConnell “tarred and feathered” while she volunteered to throw up the tar herself. “.
Trump has maintained an extraordinarily low profile since leaving office, but he indicated a desire to remain a force in Republican politics. If he stands up – whether the support of pro-Trump Republicans in the 2022 primary or as a candidate himself in 2024 – the whole party’s direction can bend.
“Trump can intervene in any state operation – or at least 90 percent of the states,” Thrasher said. “If he were to run in one of the state party elections, it would be in his favor … I know in Kentucky he would vote it out if he removed the entire apparatus.”