The marriage of convenience between President Trump and the Republican establishment ended in a nasty divorce on Wednesday, culminating in Vice President Mike Pence being ushered away as angry Trump supporters stormed the Capitol during a joint session of Congress convened to certify the Electoral College results.
“I am absolutely appalled by what the president has allowed some of his supporters to do,” said a Republican strategist who has been supportive of Trump.
Trump’s efforts to overturn the outcome of the presidential election broke his fragile relationship with the GOP governing class that only reluctantly and warily embraced him following his romp through the 2016 Republican primaries.
“There will be no going home again,” said a longtime Republican operative in Washington, D.C.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, a Kentucky Republican who has served in the upper chamber since the Reagan administration, issued a scathing rebuke of colleagues amplifying Trump’s claims of voter fraud and challenging the results in multiple close battleground states.
“It would be unfair and wrong to disenfranchise American voters and overrule the courts and the states on this thin basis,” McConnell said. “And I will not pretend such a vote would be a harmless protest gesture while relying on others to do the right thing.”
Chastising the likes of Sens. Ted Cruz and Josh Hawley, McConnell declared he would “not pretend such a vote would be a harmless protest measure while relying on others to do the right thing.”
Former House Speaker Paul Ryan had publicly denounced the planned election challenges earlier in the week. “Efforts to reject the votes of the Electoral College and sow doubt about Joe Biden’s victory strike at the foundation of our republic,” the Wisconsin Republican said in a statement, adding, “the fact that this effort will fail does not mean it will not do significant damage to American democracy.”
As the protests turned violent, more Republicans broke with the president. “The President bears responsibility for today’s events by promoting the unfounded conspiracy theories that led to this point,” said Sen. Roy Blount of Missouri, a member of the GOP leadership team. “It’s past time to accept the will of American voters and to allow our nation to move forward.”
“Today, the United States Capitol — the world’s greatest symbol of self-government — was ransacked while the leader of the free world cowered behind his keyboard — tweeting against his Vice President for fulfilling the duties of his oath to the Constitution,” Sen. Ben Sasse said in a blistering statement. “Lies have consequences. This violence was the inevitable and ugly outcome of the President’s addiction to constantly stoking division.”
The Nebraska Republican, like Utah Sen. Mitt Romney, has often criticized Trump. But Sasse also found ways to work with the administration and, unlike Romney, voted to acquit Trump on all impeachment charges during the Senate trial last year.
House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy stopped short of saying anything negative about Trump but called the violence “un-American” and said the president needed to make a calming statement. Trump did urge an end to the violence but generally coupled this with stolen election comments.
Trump complained bitterly about the disloyalty of his Republican governing partners. “Your leadership has led you down the tubes,” he told a large rally of supporters. He singled some of them out by name. “We have to get rid of the weak congresspeople,” Trump said. “The Liz Cheneys of the world. We have to get rid of them.” He added that the Wyoming Republican, whose father was vice president under George W. Bush, “never wants a soldier brought home from countries that nobody knows the names of.”
Pence has often served as the bridge between Trump and the Republican establishment in Washington. Before he was elected governor of Indiana, Pence served in the House GOP leadership. But on Wednesday, he, too, fell short of Trump’s expectations.
As the Secret Service was hurrying the vice president away and the Capitol was locked down, Trump tweeted, “Mike Pence didn’t have the courage to do what should have been done to protect our Country and our Constitution, giving States a chance to certify a corrected set of facts, not the fraudulent or inaccurate ones which they were asked to previously certify. USA demands the truth!”
“It is my considered judgment that my oath to support and defend the Constitution constrains me from claiming unilateral authority to determine which electoral votes should be counted and which should not,” Pence wrote in a letter to Congress before the joint session.
Pence endorsed Cruz over Trump in the 2016 primaries. Ryan hesitated to back Trump even after he won the nomination and appeared close to abandoning him amid the fallout over the Access Hollywood tape. McConnell criticized Trump’s tweets.
Yet they collaborated on passing tax cuts, rescinding regulations, and repealing the individual mandate at the heart of Obamacare, although they failed to scrap the law in its entirety. McConnell and Trump, in particular, achieved a detente that paved the way to a 6-3 conservative majority on the Supreme Court and over 200 federal judicial confirmations.
Even these judges let Trump down as he insisted Biden stole the election. The Supreme Court did not even hear a Bush v. Gore-type case. Trump suggested in his rally speech that it was swayed by the media.
“I think you are going to see a lot of social media activity continuing to talk about how the election was stolen and Georgia was stolen to try and drive the conversation until the end of the year,” said the Republican strategist of Trump and his supporters. “Fourteen months from now, they’re going to start primarying people.”
The strategist added that this would be a “deadly mistake” given the GOP’s opportunity for gains in the midterm elections, but the images of the Capitol Hill unrest could weaken the president’s grip on the party. “This feels like a breaking point.” Trump tweeted of the mayhem Wednesday evening, “these are the things and events that happen when a sacred landslide victory is so unceremoniously & viciously stripped away.”
After four uncomfortable, often contentious, years together, Trump and the party leadership he revolted against appear to be back where they started.
