The Republican Party Crack-Up Continues Apace
Liz Cheney says G.O.P. must ‘make clear that we aren’t the party of white supremacy.’ Good luck with that!
(image via wikimedia commons)
The Republican Party Crack-Up continues apace. As Trump is feuding with the Senate Minority Leader ("dour, sullen, and unsmiling political hack"), McConnell’s invite to speak at CPAC conveniently got lost in the mail. Even Fox News is losing Trumpist viewers to NewsMax and OANN, according to a new Suffolk University/USA Today poll, largely on the matter of who actually won the election, aka “The Big Lie.” There are also the QAnon Republicans, of whom the less that is said here the better. The fragile coalition of white grievance that has held together since midcentury last appears to be falling irreconcilably apart.
Historians of the future may locate the decisive collapse of the party to the day of the Capitol Riot. It was a political inflection point for the country as well as for the party. Some, but not that many Republicans — yet — are actually leaving the party as a result of the January 6 soft coup. But however much a Governor Rick Scott might want to cancel the Republican Civil War, it is an actual, sanguinary event occurring in real time.
There is Representative Cheney. On Tuesday, Lynn Cheney, the most senior woman in the Republican caucus, criticized Donald Trump as an “existential” threat to the party (more on that later). While she kept her leadership position in a secret ballot earlier this month, Cheney would almost certainly have had a rougher going of it had the votes been made public. Further, in voting to impeach Trump for his role in the Capitol riots ( a role even the Senate Minority Leader damned him for), she earned the censure of the Wyoming Republican Party and was actually asked to resign. Let that sink in: By her own state party!
Enter: Kevin “Starburst” McCarthy (exaggerated cough). By Wednesday, Representative Cheney was publicly contradicting her party’s Minority Leader, Kevin McCarthy. McCarthy, you’ll remember, employed cherry and strawberry-flavored Starburst fruit candies to gain favor with the leader of the free world (Averted Gaze). There was some turbulence after an expletive-filled phone conversation in which the Minority Leader’s life, seemingly in danger, was made light of by the then-President. But — bygones be bygones! — Kev and Don are back on the same page again after Kevin McCarthy played suppliant and sat down with Trump to kiss his ring at Mar-a-Lago.
The bulk of the Republican Party leadership is still behind the phantom menace that is Donald J. Trump. Representative Steve Scalise of Louisiana, the No. 2 House Republican, went on Meet the Press on Sunday to repeat The Big Lie. Even Mitch McConnell, who damned Trump for the coup, ultimately voted to acquit the former President on the process grounds (a process, we cannot fail to note, he himself put in place). Trump, being Trump, has shown McConnell — the man who saved his bacon —naught else but utter contempt. Expect Trump to be even more vicious at CPAC.
Trump and his fellow Trumpists have of late been making mock-charges about starting a third major party. But that quite frankly sounds like an “art of the deal” move, more calculated to rasp the party than to actually begin the considerable grassroots groundwork necessary to bring about a new political platform undisputedly his own. We cannot fail to note that Trump, an overweight COVID survivor that may or may not have mental challenges, would be 78 by the time of the 2024 election. Could you see him again campaigning in Iowa in the winter at that age?
Who Wins The Crack-Up?
Who wins? Whether or not Trump surrenders the Republican Party to the McConnells and the Cheney's is at present moot largely because as of now Trump is the 800-lb gorilla in the room. And, Ivanka’s bowing out of the Rubio race notwithstanding, the next generation is on deck! Why should Trump surrender the Party he cobbled together, especially when Lara is considering a run in North Carolina and Don Junior is increasingly a powerbroker. On Wednesday, he threw his considerable political weight behind Bob Padchick to head the Ohio Republican Party — a crucial state; Trump endorsed South Carolina Party Chairman Drew McKissick in his re-election bid. These are maneuvers that can only be properly construed under the category of shoring up two critical red states. Finally — on Sunday Donald Trump will be the final keynote speaker at CPAC. Trump, and his children and his loyalists like Sarah Huckabee Sanders, are essentially the new establishment of the Republican Party. Mitt Romney, who admits that Trump could win if he decided to run again, is the outsider.
The Trump Republican Party has left its moderates and conservatives in the rearview mirror. Liz Cheney, at a virtual foreign policy event hosted by the Reagan Institute on Tuesday, said that Republicans need to “make clear that we aren’t the party of white supremacy.” She added: “It’s very important, especially for us as Republicans, to make clear that we aren’t the party of white supremacy.” Good luck with that!
How does it all end? One could argue that the origins and the teleological end of the modern conservative movement lies in reactionary lawlessness. If that is indeed where it is all headed, the best possible strategy for the Cheneys and the Romneys might be to shutter the Republican Party altogether and begin anew. After the Republican Party becomes a wholly owned ethno-nationalist subsidiary of Trump, Inc., the “Patriot Party” label will open for occupancy.