Donald Trump may no longer be in the White House, but he is still casting a huge shadow over the Republican Party, which he reformed during his four years as president and ruled with an iron fist.
The former president’s conclusion on the Republicans of Congress is still formidable, as his opinion polls among GOP voters remain sky-high. Trump has promised to support Republican primary challengers for re-election in 2022 who voted to accuse or condemn him or others in the GOP who crossed him. That while flirting with a 2024 Republican presidential bid to return to the White House.
The recognition that the GOP remains Trump’s party is likely to be a contributing factor in the growing number of Senate Republican exits.
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“All of these outbursts you’ve seen come from the ‘establishment wing’ of the party,” Colin Reed, a longtime Republican strategist, told Fox News.
“I think there’s a growing recognition that it’s not the Republican Party of yesteryear, but still Trump’s party,” Reed said. “And the senators who formed their political identity before appearing on stage see the signs and take their clues accordingly and are on their way to the exits.”
Former President Donald Trump speaks at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), Sunday, February 28, 2021, in Orlando, Florida (AP Photo / John Raoux)
((AP Photo / John Raoux))
The latest retirement announcement comes Monday from Senator Roy Bunt of Missouri, a member of the Senate GOP leadership who has spent nearly a quarter of a century in Congress.
“After 14 general election victories – three to the province, seven to the U.S. House of Representatives and four nationwide elections – I will not be running for re-election of the United States Senate next year,” the 71- said Blunt. said in a video.
Blunt becomes the fifth Republican senator to retire rather than elect him for re-election in 2022, as the GOP seeks to regain the Senate majority, which he only lost in the 2020 election cycle.
Sens Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania, Rob Portman of Ohio and Richard Shelby of Alabama have all announced over the past few months that they are not going to launch re-election campaigns. Senator Richard Burr of North Carolina said during his 2016 re-election that he will not be back in 2022.
OUWAGSENAAT REPUBLICANS ANNOUNCE RETIREMENT 2022
Two other Senate Republicans are also considering retiring – 87-year-old Senator Chuck Grassley of Iowa and Ron Johnson of Wisconsin.
This past weekend, Trump promised to go to Alaska to campaign against Sen. Lisa Murkowski, the only one of the seven GOP senators who voted to condemn Trump in the indictment that is up for re-election next year.
“Trump is a contributing factor that Capitol Hill has long been a bad place to work. Members and senators have long been unhappy in their jobs. And Trump has made it worse,” said Doug Heye, a GOP veteran and former communications officer. director of the Republican National Committee, argued.
Heye said the January 6 uprising at the Capitol by right-wing extremists and other Trump supporters seeking to disrupt the certification of Congress Biden’s election victory over the then president “exacerbated it on a large scale.”
“I get the simple line that ‘Republican retires. Is Trump the reason why?’,” Heye added. “It’s a little too simple, but it’s definitely a contributing factor.”
But Heye also noted that for some of the outgoing senators, it was just “there and did it for a long, long time.”
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Brian Walsh, a former communications director of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, stressed that “pensions are a natural course of action for both parties.”
“After President Obama won the 2008 election, there were seven GOP retirements from the Senate, but that still did not stop Republicans from winning six seats in the Senate two years later,” Walsh pointed out.
Reed, a veteran of several Senate campaigns, noted that ‘when one party loses control of the White House and the Senate in the same election year, they tend to see a rush to the door of retirement, and that’s what we saw. has far in 2021. The good news for Republicans is that most of this has come in the countries that are red and that are becoming Trumpier. ‘
“I would definitely put Missouri in that camp,” Reed adds. “And honestly, Roy Blunt’s biggest vulnerability was from his right flank, not from the general election.”
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The Senate is divided between 50 and 50 between the two parties, but the Democrats have a slim shaving majority because of the casting vote of Vice President Kamala Harris, who serves as president of the Senate. This means that the IDP only needs a one-seater pickup to regain the majority. But Republicans are defending 20 of the 34 seats available in 2022. And the growing number of Senate GOP retirements means there will be more Republican primary elections over the next year and a half.
Walsh, former senior adviser to GOP senator John Cornyn of Texas, said the resignations stressed that “if Republicans regain control of the Senate in 2022, they will nominate the candidates in these races more than ever before.”
To put it bluntly, Walsh brought the Missouri Senate election to the fore in 2012, where vulnerable Democratic Senator Claire McCaskill defeated the then-representative. Todd Akin, who was favored in the race until his controversial comments about ‘legitimate rape’ helped lower his campaign.