GOP grapples with issue of how to deal with Trump
Many Republicans are distancing themselves after impeachment trial
WASHINGTON — After the Senate acquitted former President Donald Trump for the second time, Republicans disagree about how much power he will — and should — command in the party, including in the 2024 presidential election.
Conviction — and a ban on running again, a possibility if the Senate had voted for conviction — stood as the most concrete way to push Trump out of the party for good, an idea that the majority of Republicans did not embrace. Still, some national Republican figures who have clashed with Trump suggested that their view of the ex-president as a destructive force would eventually prevail.
“I think there are far more people who agree that we have got to move on from Donald Trump,” Maryland’s Republican Gov. Larry Hogan said on CNN’s “State of the Union,” adding that had he been a senator, he would have voted to convict.
Sen. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, who also voted for conviction, suggested Trump had used sheer menace to try to bend others to his will, including the members of Congress who had gathered Jan. 6 to formally certify President Biden’s election win.
Cassidy also pushed back against the notion of the former president’s grip on the GOP, asserting that Trump’s “force wanes” within the party. “The Republican Party is more than just one person,” he said Sunday on ABC’s “This Week.”
The vote will serve as a dividing line among Senate Republicans that will become particularly important if Trump tries to resurrect his political career in the 2024 election.
While Trump’s standing is mixed within the ranks of Senate Republicans, he has many more allies in the House, though 10 joined Democrats in impeaching him last month.
House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Bakersfield), who exchanged harsh words with Trump on Jan. 6 and criticized him in the days after the riot, has decided to keep Trump as an ally. Three weeks after the insurrection, McCarthy made a pilgrimage to Trump’s home in Florida and crafted an agreement with the former president to help House Republicans in the 2022 midterm elections.