Former President Donald Trump’s influence on the Republican Party has created a jagged split in the GOP that the House Republican Study Committee hopes to bridge with a robust conservative agenda.
A dozen members of the 150-member Republican Study Committee met this week with former Vice President Mike Pence in his northern Virginia office. They began hashing out conservative priorities for a party that has been hobbled over internal divisions about who should lead it.
Pence and committee members discussed an agenda centered on a strong national defense, anti-abortion policies, election security, Big Tech reforms, fiscal responsibility, and more. It would center on advocating and defending the Trump administration record, the group decided. Still, the conversation steered clear of what role, if any, Trump would play in the GOP’s future.
“Our primary focus at the moment is building a conservative agenda that unifies Republicans,” Rep. Jim Banks, an Indiana Republican and the committee’s chairman, told the Washington Examiner. “The footprint that Donald Trump has left in our party is a strong one and one that we can’t afford to ignore.”
But what about Trump?
Republicans are coping with a deep rift in the party following the 2020 election losses in Congress and Trump’s rocky departure from the White House following the Jan. 6 attack by his supporters on the Capitol that led to his second impeachment. Trump was acquitted, but Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell issued a scathing rebuke that left no doubt the powerful Kentucky Republican wants him permanently exiled from the party.
McConnell is among a group of Republicans who believe the party should steer clear of Trump as it navigates a path back to power. But others in the GOP wholly support the former president.
“President Trump is the leader of the Republican Party,” Rep. Jim Jordan, an Ohio Republican and the founder of the conservative House Freedom Caucus, tweeted on Wednesday.
Even the top House leadership team is split.
At a news conference this week, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, a longtime Trump ally, said he supported a decision by the Conservative Political Action Conference to invite Trump to deliver his first post-presidency address to its members this week in Orlando.
But Republican Conference Chairwoman Liz Cheney, who was standing next to McCarthy at the news conference, said Trump should just go away.
“I don’t believe he should be playing a role in the future of the party,” Cheney said.
While McCarthy made a quick joke about their clashing views, the rift is likely to grow as the next round of elections approach and if Trump decides to start playing an active role.
Banks played down the conflict.
“While our party is having a healthy conversation that every party has when you’re the party that’s not in power, we’re having a healthy conversation,” Banks said.
Banks said the Republican Study Committee would keep Republicans focused on policy ideas while promoting the Trump administration’s victories.
The committee, founded in 1973, has more than 150 members who make up the majority of the GOP conference.
“We’re on the right side of the issues, and the radical wing of the Democratic Party has forced them down a path that’s a dangerous one,” Banks said. “We’ve got to get back to the issues and focus on the issues, and I believe that that’s how we win back majority 2022.”
Banks said Pence told the group that he had maintained a close relationship with Trump despite the former president’s tweet that Pence “didn’t have the courage” to block the congressional certification of President Biden’s electoral victory. Pence said he plans to promote the Trump-Pence record as he navigates his own post-White House role in the GOP.
Most Republicans continue to back the former president, Banks insisted.
“Liz Cheney and the voices like Liz Cheney who want to erase Donald Trump from the Republican Party is a very slim number of Republicans in our party,” Banks said. “If we erase Donald Trump from the Republican Party and fail to recognize his appeal to working-class voters and districts like mine, we won’t win back the majority in 2022, and there’s no way we’ll win back the White House in 2024.”
