Republicans splinter over whether to make a full break from Trump.
Le Parti républicain en pleine reconstruction après l’invasion du capitole.
De nombreux républicains ont tourné le dos à Donald Trump après l’assaut du 6 Janvier au Capitole. Mais, à en croire le vote de la population deux mois plus tôt, ses idées sont toujours convaincantes pour de nombreux Américains. Dans ce contexte, comment reconstruire le Parti républicain ? Faut-il désavouer l'homme ayant été la figure de proue de ces cinq dernières années ?
President Donald Trump not only inspired a mob to storm the Capitol on January 6th — he also brought the Republican Party close to a breaking point.
2. Having lost the presidency, the House and now the Senate on Trump’s watch, Republicans are so deeply divided that many are insisting that they must fully break from the president to rebound. 3. Republicans who spent years putting off a reckoning with Trump over his dangerous behavior are now confronting a disturbing prospect: that Wednesday’s episode of violence, incited by Trump’s remarks, could linger for decades as a stain on the party — much as the Watergate break-in and the Great Depression shadowed earlier generations of Republicans.
4. “His conduct over the last eight weeks has been injurious to the country and incredibly harmful to the party,” said Chris Christie, the former governor of New Jersey who was the first major Republican to endorse Trump.
5. A small number of Republican officials who have been critical of Trump in the past called for Trump’s removal from office. Spurred by the threat many of them felt to their physical safety, and reduced to a political minority following twin losses in Georgia’s Senate runoffs, a swelling group of Republican lawmakers and strate
gists said publicly what many in their ranks have long voiced privately: It is time to move on.
6. “What happened in Georgia, what happened today are all indicative that we have to chart a course,” said Sen. John Thune of South Dakota, the second-ranking Republican, who Trump has demanded be unseated in a primary next year. “I think our identity for the past several years was built around an individual, we got to get back to where it’s built on a set of principles and ideas and policies.”
7. While veteran lawmakers were flatly urging a separation, more than 100 House Republicans, unpersuaded by the chaos in the Capitol, continued with their effort to block Congress from certifying President-elect Joe Biden’s victory. Some adopted conspiracy theories from rightwing news outlets and social media that it was left-wing saboteurs carrying out a false flag operation who ravaged the halls of Congress. 8. By Thursday morning, Trump was greeted with applause when he dialed into a breakfast at the winter meeting of the Republican National Committee, most of whose members have become a reflection of the party’s proTrump activist wing during his tenure. On Friday, the committee was set to reelect Trump’s hand-picked committee chair with no opposition.
NEW THREATS
9. When it comes to Trump, few better grasp the difficulty of balancing principle and political survival than Rep. Chip Roy of Texas. “If the Republican Party is centered solely on President Trump himself, we will fail,” Roy said. “But if we forget what it was about his message that appealed to people who are really frustrated, then we will also fail.”
10. For a number of Republicans who have long been skeptical of Trump, the events of the last two months have been clarifying. From his initial refusal to concede defeat and his relentless attacks on Republican state officials, which undermined the party’s hopes for winning the Georgia Senate seats, to savaging lawmakers and his own vice president just hours before the Capitol riot, Trump has proved himself a political arsonist.
11. “Trump is a political David Koresh,” said Billy Piper, a former chief of staff to the Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell, referring to the cult leader who died with his followers during an FBI siege in Waco, Texas. “He sees the end coming and wants to burn it all down and take as many with him as possible.” 12. The party faces a threat to its financial base, too. Several of the most powerful business federations in Washington denounced the chaos this week in stinging language, including an extraordinary statement from the normally nonpolitical National Association of Manufacturers that suggested Vice President Mike Pence invoke the 25th Amendment to remove the president from office.
13. Rep. Tom Reed of New York, who has emerged as a leader of more moderate Republicans in the House, said Thursday that the party needed to begin “not worrying about base politics as much, and standing up to that base.”
14. He argued that Republicans should pursue compromised legislation with Biden on issues like climate change, and forecast that a sizable number of Republicans would take that path. “If that means standing up to the base in order to achieve something, they’ll do it,” Reed predicted.