The Republican Party is tearing itself apart over Donald Trump.
More than half of the GOP’s rank-and-file apparently wants to continue as the Trump Party, as do many prominent party leaders. But they are far from unanimous.
“While some Republicans cling fiercely to the former president, the conclusion of the impeachment trial has thrust into the open a conflict between the party’s populist and establishment wings,” reports Bloomberg News.
“Some Republicans want to try to finally push the party past Trumpism and its anti-democratic impulses, while others — perhaps more mindful of Trump’s continued hold over the GOP base” are using his acquittal in Saturday’s Senate impeachment trial “as an occasion to wrap their arms more tightly around him,” says Vox.
South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham told Fox News on Sunday that “the Trump movement is alive and well,” and still dominating the party.
But other top leaders have had enough of the blustering former TV game-show host and boastful, self-proclaimed billionaire. They include former Sen. Jeff Flake of Arizona.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (KY) voted to acquit Trump on Saturday, but followed that with a speech about how Trump had been, in his estimation, ‘practically and morally responsible’ for provoking the mob that overran the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6,” says the Washington Post.
McConnell added that the rioters had been “fed wild falsehoods by the most powerful man on Earth – because he was angry he’d lost an election,” noted the Wall Street Journal in an editorial.
“Graham, for his part, suggested that it was Mr. McConnell, not Mr. Trump, who could face an uncertain future if Republican candidates suffer in 2022,” the Post says.
Meanwhile, “a string of high-profile Republicans who have dared to criticize the former president have faced punishments from their state and local parties,” says the Post.
They include the 10 House members who voted to impeach Trump for a second time and the seven senators who voted on Saturday to convict him. One of them, Sen. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, who was censured by his state party, posted a video on Twitter:
“We are going to have a real battle for the soul of the Republican Party over the next couple of years,” Maryland’s GOP Gov. Larry Hogan said Sunday on CNN, adding that if he were a senator he would have voted to convict Trump.
“There is no easy path forward for Republicans, including for Mr. Trump,” says the New York Times. “On one level, his acquittal makes it easier for him to brazenly claim political vindication for his role in the Jan. 6 attack … remain a powerful force in the party, seek retribution against those who crossed him and run for the presidency again — an option he has not ruled out.”
But on another level, the Times concludes, Trump “is profoundly damaged, perhaps the most disgraced American president in history, and with uncertain abilities to rally the party now that he lacks his Twitter bully pulpit.”
