While President Trump wants to leave office in disarray, Republican leaders, including Senator Mitch McConnell, are thwarting his grip on the GOP in future elections, while the powers that be with Mr. Trump agrees to punish Republican lawmakers and governors who broke. with him.
The bitter struggle underscores the deep division that Mr. Trump has created in the GOP, and all but that the next campaign will be a key test for the direction of the party, with a series of clashes in the coming months.
The friction is already increasing in several important swing states following mr. Trump’s incitement of the mob that attacked the Capitol last week. These include Arizona, where Trump-confessed activists want to oust the Republican governor they see as insufficiently loyal to the president, and Georgia, where a hard-right faction wants to defeat the current governor in a primary election.
In Washington, Republicans are particularly concerned about a handful of far-right members of the House who could lead them to the Senate in the swinging states, which could potentially affect the party in some of the most important areas of the country. McConnell’s political lieutenants are planning a large-scale campaign to prevent such candidates from winning primary elections in key states.
But Trump’s political group seems no less determined, and his allies in the states have laid the groundwork to tackle Republican officials who voted to accuse Trump – or who simply acknowledge the clear reality that Joseph R. Biden Jr. won the presidential race.
Republicans on both sides of the conflict openly acknowledge that they are heading for a showdown.
“Hell yes, we are,” said Representative Adam Kinzinger of Illinois, one of the ten Republicans in the House who voted to accuse Trump.
Mr. Kinzinger was equally blunt when asked how he and other anti-Trump Republicans could dilute the president’s influence in the primary: “We beat him,” he said.
The highest tests of mr. Trump’s influence may occur in two sparsely populated Western states, South Dakota and Wyoming, where the president has targeted several GOP leaders: John Thune, the second-ranking Republican in the Senate, and Liz Cheney, the third-ranking House Republican. .
“I suspect that in the next few years we will see a lot of the activities for some of our members, including me,” he said. Thune and add that he and others ‘should play the hand you received’. ”
He may face less political danger than me. Cheney, who in the vote to accuse Trump, said that “there has never been a greater betrayal by a president.” The Republican Party of Wyoming said it was inundated with calls and messages from voters praising her decision.
Mr. In the days since the vote, Trump has spoken to advisers about his contempt for Mrs Cheney and expressed his joy over the setback she is enduring in her home state.
In private, Republican officials were concerned about possible campaigns for a higher office by some of the House’s high-ranking backbenchers who were fighting the election results and spreading additional conspiracy theories. These figures include representatives Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, Lauren Boebert of Colorado and Andy Biggs of Arizona. All three states have Senate seats and governorships that are eligible for election in 2022.
Equally striking is the fact that a number of conservative main lines in the House openly talk about how much Mr. Trump damaged himself in the aftermath of the election, culminating in his role in inspiring the riots.
“The day after the election, the question of leadership was undoubtedly in the hands of one person, and every week that passed, he unfortunately limited himself to his own actions,” said Patrick McHenry of North Carolina, who predicted that the voters of his rank-and-file would come to share his discomfort after fully absorbing the uprising of the Capitol.
Nevertheless, Mr. Trump vowed a campaign of political retaliation against lawmakers who crossed him – a number that grew with the accusation vote. The president remains very popular among the party’s roots and is likely to be able to raise enough money to be a disruptive force in 2022.
Scott Reed, the former political chief strategist for the Chamber of Commerce, a powerful business lobby, said Republicans need to prepare for a brutal international battle. Mr. Reed, who as an ally of Mr. McConnell helped crush right-wing populists in the recent election, saying the party institution divisions in Mr. Trump’s faction must exploit to lead his favorite candidates to power.
“In 2022, we will face the Trump haystack crowd, and efforts will have to be made to strike them back,” he said. Reed said. “Hopefully they will create multi-candidate races where their influence will be diluted.”
An early test for the party is expected in the coming days, with Trump loyalists trying to get Ms. To deprive Cheney of her leadership role in the House. Should this attempt be successful, it could indicate to voters and donors that the party’s militant wing is in control – a potentially worrying signal for more traditional Republicans in the business community.
People familiar with his talks have acknowledged Kevin McCarthy, the leader of the House minority, in recent days to political donors that the outgoing president and some members of his faction have seriously damaged the party’s relationship with big business.
As mev. Cheney fired, it could encourage primary challenges against other Republicans who support accusation or condemnation, including more moderate lawmakers like representatives Peter Meijer and Fred Upton of Michigan and John Katko of New York, whose districts of Republicans could slip away if they nominated hard line Trump loyalists. But in a sign that Mr. Trump cannot expect to fully dictate party affairs, Mr. McCarthy indicated that he opposes calls to remove her from leadership.
William E. Oberndorf, an influential Republican donor who donated $ 2.5 million in the 2020 election to Mr. McConnell’s super-PAC, the Senate Leadership Fund, said donors should keep a close eye on the accusation voices as they formulate their plans to give. Oberndorf, a longtime critic of Mr. Trump, said it was a mistake for the party not to Mr. Trump during his first indictment last year.
“They now have the opportunity to address this serious mistake and make sure that Donald Trump will never be able to run for public office again,” he said. Oberndorf said. “Republican donors need to pay attention to how our elected officials vote on it.”
It is not yet clear how widely the party leadership can adopt a non-new Trumps strategy, and there are strong indications that the Republican base may react angrily to any explicit attempt to move the former president to the political trash. In a serious complication for Senate leaders, the chairman of their campaign committee, Senator Rick Scott of Florida, criticized accusations and opposed the ratification of Pennsylvania’s election results – a vote that undermined his ability to raise funds from large raising donors can undermine.
A number of state parties are already controlled by Trump allies, some of whom have said Republican traditionalists should agree with their new coalition.
“What President Trump has done has redesigned the political parties, and the founding of the Republican Party does not recognize us either – and I believe we will do the same,” said Representative Ken Buck, who is also the GOP president of Colorado. is, said. He suggested that the party pay attention to the support of Mr. Trump in the working class and that he is not “refocused on the suburban vote.”
In some ways, the party may still face the same irreconcilable pressure that has been forced over the past four years: on the one hand, Mr. Trump’s powerful personality cult on the right; on the other hand, his deep personal unpopularity is among the majority of American voters. Just as horrible as the president’s behavior may feel, they can not win general elections if his stubborn supporters stay at home or cast protest votes.
On paper, the IDP should stand a good chance of regaining one or both chambers of Congress in the next campaign, as the Democratic majorities are small and the White House party usually loses ground during midterm elections.
But the Republicans are in a state of extreme disorder in the Sun Belt states that in the column of Mr. Biden has slipped, and in several major Northern battlefields such as Wisconsin and Michigan, the likelihood of riotous senate or governor elections is confronted. The last time Democrats controlled the presidency, the House and Senate, in 2010, Republicans won the House, but they could not claim the Senate because some of their nominees were not mainstream.
The divisions may now play out the sharpest in the two historically red states that appear in the column of mr. Biden knocked out and elected three Democratic senators in this cycle: Georgia and Arizona. Local IDPs are haunted by these defeats, and Mr. Trump has plagued local leaders with fierce – and false – allegations of political audacity.
Both states have elections for the Senate and the governor in 2022, giving hard-core Trump supporters a number of inviting targets.
In Arizona, state party officials supporting Trump’s efforts to support Biden’s victory have made an effort to censor Republican Doug Ducey over his public health policies, as well as Cindy McCain and former Senator Jeff Flake. , a few Republicans who Mr. Biden supported it. Mr. Ducey is perhaps the party’s strongest site for a Senate race next year.
Jonathan Lines, a former Republican Party chairman in Arizona who supports Trump, said he feared an insular faction would paralyze the GOP at a time when it needs to be rebuilt.
“It just destroys the party to go out and slander people,” he said. Lines said. “It does not show that they are trying to attract new people to the party.”
And in Georgia, Mr. Trump promises to take down his former ally, Government Brian Kemp, for refusing to sabotage the election result in his state. This week, the state’s second-ranking Republican, Lieutenant-General Geoff Duncan, who defeated Mr. Trump reprimanded for his interference, three state lawmakers who tried to oust Mr. Trump to help, declared invalid.
Several Republicans have said they hope the Democrats will overcome their newly acquired power in a way that will unite the GOP. “Nothing unites a party like a general threat,” says Steve Stivers of Ohio.
Yet Mr. Stivers, who ran the House’s campaign committee in 2018 and saw Mr. Trump hurt the party, he hoped the president would “step aside” in the way of his predecessors who “had their time in the sun”.
And what if he does not do so, and demands repayment against the people of mr. Upton, a beloved House veteran who supported the accusation?
“Then I’m going to Fred Upton,” he said. Stivers said.