Two paths on Trumpian crisis management
Chaos highlights divisiveness of GOP leaders
The two men now leading the Republican Party usually align during political crises. But the Trumpian chaos splintering the GOP is not only testing Kevin Mccarthy, the House minority leader, and Mitch Mcconnell, the Senate minority leader — it is also highlighting their differences in how to handle the former president and hampering a united strategy for retaking Congress next year.
A 24-hour period this past week illustrated Mccarthy’s challenge. In a conference call Wednesday, he instructed House Republicans to “cut the crap,” according to officials who participated. While he did not specify what he had in mind, there were plenty of options, from Republicans’ trying to punish Rep. Liz Cheney for voting to impeach former President Donald Trump to the extremism of Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, the Qanon devotee whose paper trail of conspiracy mongering keeps growing.
Then Thursday, Mccarthy made a pilgrimage to Mar-a-lago to meet with Trump and declare that the former president was “committed to helping elect Republicans in the House and Senate in 2022.” Hours later, two of Trump’s most enthusiastic lieutenants, his eldest son and Rep. Matt Gaetz, used a rally in Wyoming to
highlight one Republican they are committed to helping elect next year: whoever challenges Cheney in her primary.
For Mcconnell, the path to reclaiming the majority decidedly does not go through Trump. Mcconnell has stopped speaking to Trump, has not taken his calls since after the Electoral College met last month and told associates that he envisions 2022 as an outsize replay of the Tea Party era, when party leaders clashed with the far-right.
He was puzzled by Mccarthy’s trek to see
Trump this past week because he fears a Trumpdominated party will lead to disaster in party primaries and losses in key Senate races like those in Pennsylvania and Arizona.
Trump may be off Twitter and on the golf course, but even in his political afterlife, he is complicating
life for Republicans in Washington.
The impeachment trial, which begins Feb. 8, and the growing debate over whether the Senate should at least censure Trump are setting the stage for a Trumpian loyalty test in the same chamber that was ransacked by a violent mob earlier this month.
On this front, the two Republican leaders have taken very different approaches but have still managed to irritate their colleagues. Mcconnell’s hope that the Capitol riots would present an opening to purge Trump from the party was dismissed by the bulk of Senate Republicans. He vexed his caucus by not offering guidance in private on how to handle the upcoming trial.
Mccarthy prompted eye-rolling among House Republicans by all but broadcasting his inner monologue as he veers
between criticizing and defending Trump and Cheney.
It’s a dilemma many lawmakers dread: whether to, in defeat, continue embracing Trump and a demagogic style of politics that delights millions on the right but cost Republicans control of the White House and Congress.
“There are certain elements of the party that are not ready to move on, not ready to say that Donald Trump lost,” said Sen. Lisa Murkowski, one of only five Senate Republicans who voted against a motion to declare the impeachment trial unconstitutional. “That’s a problem.”
Many establishmentaligned Republicans, including some in the party’s donor class, agree and have pressured congressional leaders to distance themselves from Trump. In another trip to Florida last week, Mccarthy told a group of contributors he was upset the president had not moved more quickly to stop the attack on the Capitol, according to a Republican familiar with the conversation.
Greene, the Georgia freshman, Saturday revealed she had an encouraging phone call with Trump.
“The vast majority of Republican voters, volunteers and donors are no longer loyal to the GOP,” she said this month. “Their loyalty now lies with Donald J Trump.”
The vast majority of congressional Republican lawmakers fall somewhere in between Murkowski and Greene — uneasy about bowing to Trump in perpetuity but equally unwilling to cross the party’s grassroots by partaking in any effort to drive him from the GOP.
The answer for dozens of GOP members of Congress is to vote with their feet and retire. This past week, Sen. Rob Portman of Ohio announced he would do just that in
2022, sending many Republicans into a deeper state of dismay.
“I’ve been in Republican politics for 40 years professionally — so, just after Watergate — and I will tell you this has been the worst period of the entire time,” said Rep. Tom Cole of Oklahoma, a longtime friend of Portman’s.
That Mcconnell could not rouse more of his colleagues to condemn Trump and bar him from seeking office again is his own fault, some Republicans say. He made no attempt to lobby Republican
senators, telling them only that the impeachment trial would be a vote of conscience.
Some Republicans began to change their tone once it became clear that their constituents were unbothered by Trump.
In the interim, Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., mounted a near-daily public defense of the former president while also organizing his legal team.
Now it is Graham who is claiming victory and predicting a Trump-filled Republican future. “We’re going to need Trump, and Trump needs us,” he said.
Some of Mccarthy’s colleagues privately grumble that he has been too eager to please the former president and that he humiliated himself by posing for photos at Mara-lago shortly after The New York Times reported that Trump had used a derogatory word about Mccarthy for his saying that Trump bore responsibility for the Capitol riot.
Some House Democrats are calling for the expulsion of Greene, who promoted a conspiracy theory that the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting was a hoax.
Trump, however, has repeatedly praised
Greene. Some Republicans worry that if Mccarthy strips her of committee assignments, she will become a more prominent figure on the far-right and portray herself a victim of cancel culture.
Perhaps more awkward for Mccarthy is what to do about Cheney, the third-ranking House Republican. A number of House Republicans have called for her ouster.