In general, little can unite the political Right as reliably as an effort to thwart the political Left.
At the same time, nothing in the immediate term could divide the Republican Party and keep it divided like President Trump and all that comes with him. Right now, division is the stronger force, and because of it, the party could hardly be in a worse position to begin the Biden administration as an effective counterweight.
Republicans are trapped in a political dragnet, and their problems were further detailed in a Politico report about a House GOP conference call held this week.
For one, there is impeachment. On Tuesday, the House Rules Committee debated both an article of impeachment brought against the president for “incitement of insurrection” and a resolution calling on Vice President Mike Pence to move forward with 25th Amendment proceedings. The latter is a pipe dream but impeachment, even if not immediately feasible, is certainly possible with Democratic majorities in Congress and with some sympathetic Republicans.
House Leader Kevin McCarthy of California told colleagues that he believes impeachment “would have the opposite effect of bringing our country together,” though he did suggest four other “avenues” forward, one being censure of the president.
It’s evident that McCarthy, perhaps to keeping Trump voters within reach, feels obligated to be charitable to the president, but he also must feel the pressure of implicating and perhaps formally blaming the president for what happened.
McCarthy has not explicitly advocated censure, and objectively, impeachment is more severe than censure. But I imagine it would be all the same to those voters committed to Trump. If McCarthy thinks support for censure would be less disenchanting to either them or the president, he ought to remember the fervor which drove that mass to the Capitol.
Another problem for Republicans is Trump’s transience. During and after the riot, Trump equivocated, qualifying his call for people to go home by offering his love and taking another swipe at the election.
The next day, his press secretary held a shotgun press conference condemning violence, and Trump did his own video message saying the same. McCarthy told his caucus on the conference call that Trump has accepted some responsibility for the riot.
Yet, on Tuesday, the president told reporters something else — that his speech was “totally appropriate.” For someone in McCarthy’s position, all the back-and-forth makes it impossible for him to put forward a solid frame of reference with regard to Trump as impeachment efforts continue. For example, if the president publicly denies or evades responsibility, McCarthy can’t say, “Well, the president acknowledged responsibility, so perhaps a censure or an investigative committee would better alternatives to impeachment.”
Further, if a nonzero number of Republicans support censure or impeachment, McCarthy could hardly look at remaining Trump voters and point to an acknowledgment of responsibility as justification. There’s more evidence that he doesn’t accept responsibility than that he does.
Then, there’s Trump’s future ambitions. One of his last tweets was this, “The 75,000,000 great American Patriots who voted for me, AMERICA FIRST, and MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN, will have a GIANT VOICE long into the future. They will not be disrespected or treated unfairly in any way, shape or form!!!”
Trump could never get 75 million people to vote for him again unless he can recruit somebody to develop a Trump voter-spawning machine. Even if, in four years, Democrats have made serious inroads on their agenda, there will be no deal to be had between Trump and rank-and-file Republicans like those that were made in 2016 and 2020. He defamed Pence, the salt and light of his administration. Donors are closing their pockets, and allies are becoming former allies. If Trump sat in the middle of Fifth Avenue in sackcloth and ashes, it would be an insufficient penance.
The political conditions under which he got 75 million votes are history. That appears lost on him as he leans on his 2020 numbers, and it could be bad news for Republicans in future cycles for obvious reasons. As will Trump go, so will go his most ardent devotees, while millions of other conservative voters won’t.
Finally, though it’s more of a bitter cherry on top, McCarthy “gave his blessing” to members to use the new proxy voting system allowing members to vote from a distance, according to Politico. He did it “to address members’ lingering safety concerns about returning to the Capitol.”
Remember that McCarthy raised a big stink about the proxy voting proposal when Democrats began floating it during the spring for pandemic reasons. He eventually filed suit to stop it. The suit failed, though he appealed. “McCarthy is generally opposed because 200 years of House history should not be flippantly ignored, and [he] believes any sort of discussion on the matter would have to be bipartisan,” a McCarthy spokesman told the Washington Examiner in April.
Now, McCarthy has relented, and so it is that the riot cut down another effort at countering a sweeping Democratic change.
It’s a tough road ahead for Republicans. Trump was a political market play from which the GOP cannot fully divest without taking more losses than it already has. And, of course, an unknown number of congressional Republicans, and presumably millions of voters, do not want to fully divest.
The party will now have to juggle finding a way forward and dealing with a unified Democratic government at the same time.
