Former Rep. Denver Riggleman of Virginia tells CNN that the majority of Republicans in his district are effectively brain damaged after four years of Trump.
“I’m on the ground here in Virginia in the 5th District and I would still say a majority of Republicans believe Trump shouldn’t have been impeached, that there was a false flag operation at the Capitol and that stop the steal is real.”
This theory is supported by the spectacle of local and state Republican parties voting over and over and over and over again to censure lawmakers who dared to impeach or convict Trump.
Dave Ball, the chairman of the Washington County, Pennsylvania, Republican Party, explained this very well while expressing his intention to censure Sen. Pat Toomey.
“We did not send him there to vote his conscience, we did not send him there to do the right thing, whatever he said he was doing. We sent him there to represent us, and we feel very strongly that he did not represent us.”
It’s therefore not a surprise that the latest Morning Consult poll finds that Trump would easily win the Republican Party nomination for president if those contests were held today. Yet, they also find that President Joe Biden has a healthy 62 percent-33 percent approval rating.
Clearly, the Party of Lincoln needs the base to come back to reality. Some of this may transpire slowly over time. Two years from now, it’s possible that Trump’s standing with the base will have eroded, perhaps substantially. In fact, if the movement is great enough, the folks who are defending Trump today may be defending themselves instead.
That’s a tricky problem for leaders like Mitch McConnell, because he clearly wants to convince the party base that Biden’s election was legitimate and that Trump deserves whatever legal problems he faces. But if he’s too convincing, most of the elected Republicans in Congress will be in a bind explaining why they allowed the ex-president to get away with his crimes.
On the other hand, if McConnell loses this argument, he’ll lose his leadership position and the party will continue to be on the wrong end of Biden’s massive approval numbers, running QAnon nuts and losing winnable elections all across the country.
For these reasons, McConnell should be supportive of Speaker Pelosi’s proposal for a 9/11 Commission-style independent investigation of the January 6 insurrection. Getting the truth out to the public in the least partisan way has the best chance for penetrating the Trumpian information bubble in which most Republican voters reside.
Getting some control over that bubble would help, too. The Republicans might want to use their disinformation Wurlitzer to fight back against Biden’s agenda, but they don’t want more bad information about the 2020 election.
What’s really tough is the calculus for Republicans who want to run for president in 2024. Aspirants like Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz, Josh Hawley and Tom Cotton stuck with Trump because they didn’t want to anger his supporters. But if those supporters stick with Trump and he runs again, that’s the worst situation for them. Anything that prevents Trump from running is optimal. Anything that turns his supporters against him is second-best. What they can’t afford is for Trump to remain viable.
So, the GOP’s future depends on Trump being discredited with Republicans. But the party can’t accomplish that without discrediting itself.
In fact, it’s not clear they can accomplish this at all. It could be that the QAnon-wing of the party will win in a rout.
4.5
Square peg, meet round hole
And how many people are still left in the Republican party? How many of those big fish can survive together in that increasingly smaller pond?
4
Your article explains why McConnell wants someone else to take care of Trump. Ideally he’d die or his health would degrade enough to render him harmless. Next best would be criminal conviction but that’s tricky because he could become a martyr.
I think Trump’s psycho statement yesterday has complicated Mitch’s mission.
Honestly, given that we’re talking about Kentucky, I could easily see Mitch getting his hat handed to him in a Primary by a seriously crazy Trumper. Trump carried Kentucky by 26 points, and there is almost zero doubt that McConnell’s support in Kentucky is almost solely based on his doing Trump’s bidding for the last four years. In a poll just last week, his approval in Kentucky was under water by 12 points. And with his open pushback against Trump, that gap will only continue to grow if he maintains his current stance or becomes more vocal about Trump. He has another six years to figure out how to get Kentuckians to fall in love with him again. Even if he re-embraces Trump at some point along the way, if Trump decides he’s found a more sympathetic and obedient sycophant to run against him, Mitch is going to find that he and Elaine will have a lot more time to spend together.
I think you are right that Mitch’s re-election has little to do with his personally popularity, which was seriously underwater even before all this. That said, the next election is 6 years away, Mitch will be 85 years old, and Trump might be long dead by then from too many hamberders.
Yes, I expect the landscape will change significantly between now and then. Trump will be 80, if he’s still alive. The greater likelihood is that Trump 2.0 has appeared out of the MAGA crowd.
5
Seems like a felony conviction is now in order. Personally I feel that would be best for everyone. It might make Rs winning the WH in 2024 slightly more likely (with that thing not on the ticket) but I really didn’t like what TP 2020 seemed to do to the downballot races. It seemed to bring out the lunatics who wouldn’t usually show up at the polls, and meanwhile some the saner republicans split their tickets. I’d rather see “supported a felon in his attempt to overthrow the govmt” hung on many a 2024 national R candidate and let the MAGAts ponder pulling the lever for Liddle Marco.