“We should just move on,” Republican Sen. Ted Cruz said in January, referring to the impeachment of former President Donald Trump.
The collective body language of some portion of the Republican Party suggests a desire to move on from Trump altogether, not simply from impeachment. Yet a political center of gravity, as it turns out, cannot be so easily replaced.
“There is no actual, you know, civil war [among Republicans] going on,” CNN’s Oliver Darcy said over the weekend, pointing to coverage by “right-wing” media, which “controls the keys to the Republican Party,” as evidence.
Media organs are part of the Republican milieu, but they aren’t the Republican Party itself, which is today in an undeniable struggle with itself, relative to the Republican Party of August 2020. Then, 77% of Republicans and GOP leaners approved of Trump. Pew found that after the Capitol riot, Trump’s approval among that group had fallen to 60%.
The riot also put a wedge between Trump and other prominent Republicans, whose overall change in posture toward Trump can hardly be overlooked. Look at what his Cabinet officials said on their way out, or see Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell’s visible sullenness on the Senate floor after the riot. Listen to Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham’s Jan. 7 press conference when he said about Trump’s behavior that “enough is enough.” Consider also that House GOP leader Kevin McCarthy, though he opposed impeachment, recommended a censure of Trump. All of it would suggest that they, in light of everything, couldn’t possibly get behind Trump in 2024.
That said, Trump is still popular, as Pew’s 60% finding and other polling attest. That’s why McCarthy and Graham have pushed back on their initial instincts and, in something of a course reversal, are back to leaning on Trump for the 2022 midterm elections.
McCarthy went from saying that Trump was responsible for the riot to now saying that Trump had “some responsibility” for it while also distributing responsibility to “everybody across the country.” He also flew down to Mar-a-Lago to meet with Trump, saying that Trump “committed to helping elect Republicans in the House and Senate in 2022.”
As for Graham, he recently said, “To my Republican colleagues, there’s no way in hell we’re going to retake the House and Senate without President Trump’s help.”
Republicans in Congress naturally want the Trump administration, and their role in it, to be remembered for its accomplishments rather than its scandals. That’s surely one source of pressure discouraging the more Trump-weary ones from formally or rhetorically rejecting Trump outright. McCarthy, Graham, and other congressional Republicans see the remaining support for Trump among GOP voters as a clear mandate to keep Trump close.
The question is, to what extent does the party really have to employ Trump himself to court the 60%, the majority of whom have presumably voted for Republicans their whole lives? By the numbers, using Trump isn’t an unfounded midterm strategy, but it’s difficult to imagine that he improves Republicans’ overall chances at taking Congress after having left office at 29% approval.
