The Trump approach to politics may have captured the GOP permanently
The past few tumultuous weeks in American politics have revealed a sharp split within the normally unified Republican ranks. This rift is playing out most directly on the issue of Donald Trump’s impeachment, but has much deeper roots.
Elements of this rift could be seen throughout the Trump presidency, with most Republican officeholders and party leaders enthusiastically endorsing pretty much any claim that Trump made, no matter how false or inane. Only a tiny number — most notably, Sens. Mitt Romney and Jeff Flake — spoke up. But this latter group seems to have found a stronger voice since the insurrection at the Capitol on Jan. 6.
On one level this split is about Trump. Some Republicans see him as uniquely capable of turning out lower-income white voters or they fear those voters being unleashed against them (both electorally and physically). Others want Trump gone from the Republican Party, seeing him as antithetical to whatever remains of ideological conservatism as well as a barrier to their own presidential ambitions. And some see him as politically costly, having undermined two winnable Senate runoffs in Georgia.
But the split runs deeper than concerns about Trump. At the core of this recent rift is a commitment to democracy, now revealed by the insurrection and votes to disqualify states’ electors. The Republican officials who promoted the conspiracy theories and fueled the lie of a stolen election demonstrated a hostility to democratic elections. The party’s other faction is willing to accept the outcome of an election even if it is not happy with its results.
This struggle in the GOP quite simply puts American democracy on the line.
https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2021-01-24/republican-party-split-donald-trump
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