Category Archives: Republican

As youve undoubtedly noticed, the current political environment is super partisan and polarized. We are in the midst of an unprecedented run of close, competitive elections, and Democrats and Republicans are about as far apart ideologically as theyve ever been. Many of them also feel a strong antipathy toward each other, to the point that most believe the other side fundamentally differs not just in its priorities but in its core values, too.

As a result, few voters split their tickets in November. That is, if you voted for one party for president, you probably voted for the same party up and down the ballot. Take how voters cast their ballots in the U.S. House elections, the only other national election in 2020 aside from the presidential election (the presidential race is on the ballot everywhere, as are all 435 House seats). Just 16 out of 435 districts backed a presidential nominee from one party and a House candidate from the other party, according to district-level voting data compiled by Daily Kos Elections. That translates to just 4 percent of districts splitting their tickets in 2020, the smallest share in the past 70 years.

That number is stark, and speaks to how deeply entrenched partisanship is in our elections, but as the chart above shows, this cycle isnt the first time this has been the case. Over the past 20 years, the share of districts splitting their House and presidential results between the two major parties has consistently fallen below 20 percent, and 2020 was the third consecutive cycle it fell below 10 percent. This represents a sea change from much of the latter half of the 20th century, when all but one cycle (1952) topped 20 percent. In fact, wed have to go back to the start of the 20th century to find a similar period with such a small share of crossover seats between 1900 and 1908.

[Related: Where Did All The Bellwether Counties Go?]

What is fueling this bevy of straight-ticket outcomes is a sharp increase in the one-to-one relationship between presidential and House voting. Charles Franklin, director of the Marquette Law School Poll, recently observed that the correlation between the presidential and House vote margin in each district was far greater in 2020 than in 2000, just two decades prior. Based on Franklins calculations, the 2020 presidential vote explained more than 85 percent of the variation in the House vote last November, whereas it explained only about 30 percent of the variation in 2000.

Now, this doesnt mean that the few districts that did split their outcomes in 2020 werent important; rather, they were illustrative of why the Democrats ended up with a narrow majority in the House. Thats because in these 16 districts, the GOP did slightly better than the Democrats overall, and not just because Republicans won nine of these districts compared with the Democrats seven. The GOP also notably won the four closest races in these districts and carried six of the seven seats with the largest gap between the House and presidential vote. In fact, of the 14 House seats that the GOP flipped in 2020, four of them were from these 16 crossover districts.

Districts carried by a presidential candidate of one major party and a House candidate of the other party in 2020

i Incumbent in November 2020

Sources: The Cook Political Report, Daily Kos Elections

The GOPs slight edge in these crossover seats is significant, as it continues a recent pattern in presidential contests of Republicans winning more districts with split outcomes. (Democrats previously held this advantage, from 2000 to 2008, but in 2010 they lost many seats in the South that had long been in their hands despite voters leaning toward the GOP at the presidential level.) However, while the GOP may have done somewhat better in the crossover seats in 2020, they still proved to be pivotal to the Democrats majority: The Democrats now hold 222 seats overall, and thats in large part thanks to these seats. If theyd lost five or more of these split-ticket seats, Republicans would have gained control. In total, the average gap between the presidential and House margins in the 16 crossover seats was about 9.2 points, while the average difference in the remaining House seats was 4.4 points, indicative of just how close the presidential and House races ran together.

And that close alignment will likely be the reality moving forward. Even if the number of crossover seats increases in 2024, it would take a dramatic shift in our politics for enough voters to split their tickets to produce a lot of Democratic House members in seats carried by the GOP presidential nominee or vice versa. Now more than ever, these split-ticket outcomes are the exception, not the rule.

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Why Only 16 Districts Voted For A Republican And A Democrat In 2020 - FiveThirtyEight

David Graham: Trump thinks hes found a new defense

The party itself was not a party in any Western sense, but a vehicle for a cabal of elites, with a cult of personality at its center. The Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev was an utterly mediocre man, but by the late 1970s he had cemented his grip on the Communist Party by elevating opportunists and cronies around him who insisted, publicly and privately, that Brezhnev was a heroic genius. Factories and streets and even a city were named for him, and he promoted himself to the top military rank of Marshal of the Soviet Union. He awarded himself so many honors and medals that, in a common Soviet joke of the time, a small earthquake in Moscow was said to have been caused by Brezhnevs medal-festooned military overcoat falling off its hanger.

The elite leaders of this supposedly classless society were corrupt plutocrats, a mafia dressed in Marxism. The party was infested by careerists, and its grip on power was defended by propagandists who used rote phrases such as real socialism and Western imperialism so often that almost anyone could write an editorial in Pravda or Red Star merely by playing a kind of Soviet version of Mad Libs. News was tightly controlled. Soviet radio, television, and newspaper figures plowed on through stories that were utterly detached from reality, regularly extolling the successes of Soviet agriculture even as the country was forced to buy food from the capitalists (including the hated Americans).

Members of the Communist Party who questioned anything, or expressed any sign of unorthodoxy, could be denounced by name, or more likely, simply fired. They would not be executedthis was not Stalinism, after allbut some were left to rot in obscurity in some make-work exile job, eventually retiring as a forgotten Comrade Pensioner. The deal was clear: Pump the partys nonsense and enjoy the good life, or squawk and be sent to manage a library in Kazakhstan.

This should all sound familiar.

The Republican Party has, for years, ignored the ideas and principles it once espoused, to the point where the 2020 GOP convention simply dispensed with the fiction of a platform and instead declared the party to be whatever Comradeexcuse me, PresidentDonald Trump said it was.

Read: The hole where Donald Trump was

Like Brezhnev, Trump has grown in status to become a heroic figure among his supporters. If the Republicans could create the rank of Marshal of the American Republic and strike a medal for a Hero of American Culture, Trump would have them both by now.

A GOP that once prided itself on its intellectual debates is now ruled by the turgid formulations of what the Soviets would have called their leading cadres, including ideological watchdogs such as Tucker Carlson and Mark Levin. Like their Soviet predecessors, a host of dull and dogmatic cable outlets, screechy radio talkers, and poorly written magazines crank out the same kind of fill-in-the-blanks screeds full of delusional accusations, replacing NATO and revanchism with antifa and radicalism.

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The Republican Party Is Now in Its End Stages - The Atlantic

Then-candidate Donald Trump holds a campaign rally in Mobile, Ala., in August 2015. Mark Wallheiser/Getty Images hide caption

Then-candidate Donald Trump holds a campaign rally in Mobile, Ala., in August 2015.

In the last 28 months, the Republican Party has lost the White House and lost control of both chambers of Congress.

With the shock of those setbacks still sinking in, the party has been rocked and riven by former President Donald Trump's refusal to concede, a pro-Trump riot in the U.S. Capitol and an impeachment effort that even some Republicans backed.

As happens at such moments, some editorialists and on-air voices are saying the Grand Old Party is over. But premature obituaries of this kind are neither new nor convincing. The latest batch of them might just set the stage for the next remarkable Republican comeback.

Where will the party turn in its hour of crisis? If the past is any guide, it will turn in two directions: to the right, and to the South. These have been the wellsprings of strength and support that have brought the party back from the brink in recent decades.

That was the strategy that led to Richard Nixon's elections as president in 1968 and 1972, and it was still working for Ronald Reagan in the 1980s.

Solidifying the South and energizing conservatives were also crucial factors in the Republican tsunami of 1994, when the GOP surged to majorities in Congress and in statehouses. That hamstrung the remainder of Bill Clinton's presidency and presaged the election of Republican George W. Bush in 2000.

It was a lesson not lost on Trump. While not even a Republican until late in life, he started his primary campaign billboarding the party's most conservative positions on taxes, trade, immigration and abortion. And the first of his rallies to draw a crowd in the tens of thousands was in a football stadium in Mobile, Ala., two months after he declared his candidacy in the summer of 2015.

Whether the next standard-bearer for the GOP is Trump himself or someone else, there is little doubt the playbook will be the same.

Low points, then turnarounds

Before the present moment, Republican electoral fortunes had hit three particularly low points in the previous 70 years. The first came after the Lyndon Johnson landslide election in 1964, the second after the Watergate scandals a decade later and the third after the election of Clinton with a big Democratic majority in the Senate in 1992.

Perhaps the most discouraging of these for the GOP was Johnson's tidal wave, which carried in the biggest majorities Democrats in Congress had enjoyed since the heyday of Franklin Roosevelt and the New Deal.

Johnson, a Texas Democrat, had assumed the presidency a year earlier when John F. Kennedy was assassinated. Despite his own Southern roots, he pushed through the landmark Civil Rights Act outlawing segregation in public facilities. But as he signed it, he was reported to have said he feared his party had "lost the South for a generation."

The first sign that he was right came that fall. Even as Johnson got 60% of the nationwide popular vote and carried 44 states, he lost five in the "Deep South" (Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia and South Carolina). This bloc voted for Republican Sen. Barry Goldwater, an Arizonan who had opposed the Civil Rights Act as an affront to state's rights.

When this fistful of five states defected, it was a stunner. They had resisted Republicans even when the Democrats nominated Northern liberals like Illinois' Adlai Stevenson (1952 and 1956) and Kennedy (1960), who was not only a New Englander but a Catholic.

Before that they had stuck with the Democrats even in the party's worst drubbings of the century, although some had left the fold for third-party attractions such as segregationist Strom Thurmond of South Carolina, who left the Democrats for a time to form the States Rights Party in 1948.

This shift in Southern sensibilities in the 1960s was linked to the national Democrats' embrace of the civil rights movement, the passage of the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts and then to the creation of Medicare and other "Great Society" programs in 1965.

To be sure, there were other factors buoying what had been the "party of Lincoln" in Dixie, including the arrival of affluent Northern retirees and of industries lured by the lower cost of (non-unionized) labor.

But the salient issue was race. As Republican strategist Kevin Phillips expressed it to New York Times reporter James Boyd in 1970: "The more Negroes who register as Democrats in the South, the sooner the Negrophobe whites will quit the Democrats and become Republicans. That's where the votes are."

"The Southern Strategy"

Working for Republican candidate Nixon in 1968, Phillips popularized the label of "Southern Strategy" for the overall approach his candidate took to the electorate that year. But Nixon tapped into Republican local organizations already growing in the South, largely by emphasizing states' rights and the "law and order" theme. The latter gained popular traction nationwide as riots ravaged many major cities in 1967 and 1968 (especially after the assassination of Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. that year).

That strategy proved crucial for Nixon. He carried South Carolina (where Thurmond, still a senator, was now a Republican and a Nixon man), plus Florida, North Carolina, Virginia, Tennessee and Kentucky. It turned out to be enough, even though five other Southern states' electoral votes went to George Wallace, the segregationist former governor of Alabama who ran that year as the nominee of the American Independent Party.

Nixon worried about another Wallace bid costing him Southern states again in 1972, and he worked hard to maneuver Wallace in another direction. In the end, Wallace sought the Democratic nomination for president in 1972 (a campaign cut short when he was paralyzed by an assassination attempt). Nixon swept the South that year en route to winning 49 states overall.

The wilderness after Watergate

After such a resounding reelection, it seemed unimaginable that Nixon or his party could be in political trouble so soon after his second inauguration. But a 1972 burglary at the headquarters of the Democratic National Committee (in the Watergate hotel), was traced to Nixon's campaign. His efforts to cover up that connection were then exposed, leading to impeachment proceedings. When audio tapes of his conspiratorial meetings with aides were made public, he resigned and was pardoned by his successor, Gerald Ford.

Republicans once again found themselves in the wilderness. Midterm elections arrived right after the resignation and pardon. Republicans nationwide paid the price, with the party losing seats in Congress it had held for generations.

Two years later, Democrat Jimmy Carter was elected president, largely because as a former governor of Georgia he could call his home region back to its Democratic roots. Indeed, in 1976 he carried every Southern state but Virginia.

But even in that year, the Southern tilt of the new GOP was apparent in the primaries. Ford, seeking a term of his own, was cruising through the early party events up until North Carolina in late March. There he was ambushed by the conservative, onetime Goldwater spokesman who was challenging him for the party's nomination, Reagan.

Reagan also won primaries in Texas, Georgia and Arkansas and virtually tied Ford in Tennessee and Kentucky. Combined with his wins in the West, these late breakthroughs almost brought him the nomination.

Another Southern-bred comeback

Four years later, with Carter vulnerable, Reagan and the South were both front and center. Reagan backers had created a new early primary in South Carolina, which he won easily. That sent a signal across the region, and the following week Reagan won Florida, Georgia and Alabama. He went on to win every Southern primary, including the knockout in Texas over that state's favorite son George H.W. Bush, whom he later made his running mate.

How had a son of the Midwest by way of California (and Hollywood) come to be such a champion of the South? One answer was suggested by the eager support of Thurmond, still a powerbroker in his eighth decade. Another answer was manifest in the campaign's first big rally after Reagan was nominated in the summer of 1980.

That kickoff for the fall campaign was held in Neshoba County, Miss., near the site of a notorious 1964 murder of three civil rights workers. Reagan's campaign chose that location for him to proclaim his belief in states' rights, his opposition to the "welfare state" and his devotion to "law and order."

In that November, Reagan beat Carter everywhere in the old Confederacy but in the incumbent president's own home state. In 1984, storming to reelection, Reagan swept the region with landslide margins.

The Southern Strategy kept rolling in 1988, when the GOP nominated Bush, Reagan's loyal vice president, who had forsaken his New England roots to go all-in as a transplanted Texan. He was Southern enough, and conservative enough, to win every state the Census Bureau defines as Southern with the lone exception of West Virginia.

Clinton-Gore could compete

Bush's term in office featured a short and highly successful war in the Persian Gulf and a budget deal with Democrats that would eventually reduce the federal deficit and slow the growth of the national debt. But a brief recession cost him in the polls, and a rebellion broke out on the party's right.

Bush got a primary challenge from Pat Buchanan, a media personality who served as an adviser to Reagan and Nixon. Buchanan assailed the budget deal because it raised taxes. He conjured the spirits of Reagan and Goldwater and questioned Bush's conservative bona fides. So did Ross Perot, an eccentric billionaire Texan who was running as a self-financing independent.

On top of that, Bush was confronted with the Democrats' choice of an all-Southern ticket in Clinton of Arkansas and Al Gore of Tennessee. The young Democrats who could talk Southern carried their home states plus Louisiana and Georgia and all the Civil War "border states" (Missouri, Kentucky, West Virginia and Maryland). The region was back in play.

Clinton and Gore threw a chill into Republicans. What if Clinton served two terms and gave way to a still-vital, still-Southern Gore who could serve two more? That would be a roadblock in the White House equivalent to Roosevelt's four wins.

If that seems far-fetched now, consider that Clinton did win the popular vote twice and Gore won it in 2000 (losing by the barest of margins in the Electoral College). They initiated the current stretch in which Democrats have won the popular vote seven times in the last eight presidential elections.

Democrats in 1992 were also able to hold on to seven of the nine Senate seats they had won in Southern and border states in 1986. That kept their overall Democratic majority at 57-43, providing the muscle to take on the health care reform issue in 1993.

For a time, the momentum behind that issue seemed so strong that more than a few Republicans were looking for ways to be part of it. They did not want to be left out of what appeared then to be the national direction. It was not the last time Republicans contemplated a move toward the center in the wake of a daunting defeat.

GOP goes South again

But as it turned out, the road to redemption would be quite different. Republicans decided to close ranks and oppose the Clinton health proposals, and they succeeded in blocking them.

In the midterm campaign of 1994, Republicans in the House united behind their party's No. 2 leader, Newt Gingrich of Georgia, and his "Contract with America" a list of popular, often populist ideas such as a constitutional amendment to balance the federal budget.

Democrats in the House were also dealing with new maps dividing the electoral districts within each state. The creation of more minority-friendly districts in the metropolitan areas had siphoned off likely Democratic voters from adjacent suburban and exurban districts. That weakened Democratic incumbents in the latter districts, especially in the South, where the remapping was most dramatic.

All these factors combined to produce a windfall for Republicans all over the country in the midterms of 1994, but it was a watershed election in the South. For more than a century after Reconstruction, Democrats had held a majority of the governorships and of the Senate and House seats in the South. Even as the region became accustomed to voting Republican for president, this pattern had held at the statewide and congressional levels.

But in November 1994, in a single day, the majority of Southern governorships, Senate seats and House seats shifted to the Republicans. That majority has held ever since, with more legislative seats and local offices shifting to the GOP as well. The South is now the home base of the Republican Party.

The 2020 aftermath

No wonder that in contesting the results in six swing states he lost, Trump seems to have worked hardest on Georgia. If he had won there, he still would have lost the Electoral College decisively. But as the third most populous Southern state, and the only Southern state to change its choice from 2016, it clearly held special significance.

It's worth noting that, even without Georgia, Trump won 13 states where slavery had once been legal (including Oklahoma, which was still a territory during the Civil War, and West Virginia, which was then a part of Virginia) and these states provided nearly 70% of his Electoral College votes.

The move to the right, and the focus on the South, have been the route to renewed success for Republicans again and again.

It was there Trump began his big rally strategy nearly six years ago. It was there he would emerge as the clear front-runner for the nomination in 2016 by winning South Carolina's primary, dominating among the staunchest conservatives in that legendary bastion of Southern independence.

So it seemed more than appropriate that South Carolina's Lindsey Graham would be the first Republican senator summoned to confer with Trump about the party's plans after the impeachment trial ended. And appropriate that the meeting took place at Mar-a-Lago, in Florida, where Trump has relocated his legal residence and political operation.

If Trump is to rise again, it will once again be as a born-again conservative and an adopted son of the South. And if the next Republican is not Trump, nearly all the top contenders to succeed him are from states with at least one college football team in the Southeastern Conference.

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With Or Without Trump, Republicans Will Likely Keep Right And Head South - NPR

Seven Republican senators voted to convictformer President Trump on the charge of incitement to insurrection, joining Democrats to make it it a far more bipartisan vote than Mr. Trump's first impeachment trial. But the final vote of 57-43 fell short of the 67 votes that would have been needed for conviction.

The Republicans voting to convict were Senators Richard Burr of North Carolina, Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, Susan Collins of Maine, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, Mitt Romney of Utah, Ben Sasse of Nebraska and Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania.

Romney's vote was all but a given, and the votes from Collins and Murkowski weren't unexpected. Perhaps the most surprising vote came from Burr.

But something distinguishes most of the Republicans who voted to convict Mr. Trump most of them aren't up for reelection soon. Murkowski is the only one of the group facing reelection in 2022. Burr and Toomey aren't running for another term.

Collins and Murkowski asked some of the most probing questions on Friday when senators had the chance to pose questions to the defense and to the House impeachment managers.

Collins, Murkowski, Romney and Sasse also joined Democrats in voting to call witnesses Saturday, as did Repubilcan Senator Lindsey Graham. But Democrats ultimately backed off on calling witnesses.

Several of the senators released statements explaining their decisions following the vote Saturday.

"As I said on January 6th, the President bears responsibility for these tragic events. The evidence is compelling that President Trump is guilty of inciting an insurrection against a coequal branch of government and that the charge rises to the level of high Crimes and Misdemeanors. Therefore, I have voted to convict," Burr wrote. "I do not make this decision lightly, but I believe it is necessary."

Cassidy posted a video statement on Twitter, saying, "Our Constitution and our country is more important than any one person. I voted to convict President Trump because he is guilty."

Toomey issued a statement saying, in part: "I was one of the 74 million Americans who voted for President Trump, in part because of the many accomplishments of his administration. Unfortunately, his behavior after the election betrayed the confidence millions of us placed in him.

"His betrayal of the Constitution and his oath of office required conviction."

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Here are the 7 Republicans who voted to convict Trump - CBS News

During the first trial of Donald J. Trump, 13 months ago, the former president commanded near-total fealty from his party. His conservative defenders were ardent and numerous, and Republican votes to convict him for pressuring Ukraine to help him smear Joseph R. Biden Jr. were virtually nonexistent.

In his second trial, Mr. Trump, no longer president, received less ferocious Republican support. His apologists were sparser in number and seemed to lack enthusiasm. Far fewer conservatives defended the substance of his actions, instead dwelling on technical complaints while skirting the issue of his guilt on the charge of inciting the Jan. 6 riot at the Capitol.

And this time, seven Republican senators voted with Democrats to convict Mr. Trump the most bipartisan rebuke ever delivered in an impeachment process. Several others, including Mitch McConnell, the minority leader, intimated that Mr. Trump might deserve to face criminal prosecution.

Mr. McConnell, speaking from the Senate floor after the vote, denounced Mr. Trumps unconscionable behavior and held him responsible for having given inspiration to lawlessness and violence.

Yet Mr. McConnell had joined with the great majority of Republicans just minutes earlier to find Mr. Trump not guilty, leaving the chamber well short of the two-thirds majority needed to convict the former president.

The vote stands as a pivotal moment for the party Mr. Trump molded into a cult of personality, one likely to leave a deep blemish in the historical record. Now that Republicans have passed up an opportunity to banish him through impeachment, it is not clear when or how they might go about transforming their party into something other than a vessel for a semiretired demagogue who was repudiated by a majority of voters.

Defeated by President Biden, stripped of his social-media megaphone, impeached again by the House of Representatives and accused of betraying his oath by a handful of Republican dissenters, Mr. Trump nonetheless remains the dominant force in right-wing politics. Even offline and off camera at his Palm Beach estate, and offering only a feeble impeachment defense through his legal team in Washington, the former president continues to command unmatched admiration from conservative voters.

Indeed, in a statement celebrating the Senate vote on Saturday, Mr. Trump declared that his political movement has only just begun.

The determination of so many Republican lawmakers to discard the mountain of evidence against Mr. Trump including the revelation that he had sided with the rioters in a heated conversation with the House minority leader, Kevin McCarthy reflects how thoroughly the party has come to be defined by one man, and how divorced it now appears to be from any deeper set of policy aspirations and ethical or social principles.

After campaigning last year on a message of law and order, most Republican lawmakers decided not to apply those standards to a former commander in chief who made common cause with an organized mob. A party that often proclaimed that Blue lives matter balked at punishing a politician whose enraged supporters had assaulted the Capitol Police. A generations worth of rhetoric about personal responsibility appeared to founder against the perceived imperative of accommodating Mr. Trump.

Lanhee Chen, a Hoover Institution scholar and policy adviser to a number of prominent Republican officials, said the G.O.P. would need to redefine itself as a governing party with ambitions beyond fealty to a single leader.

When the conservative movement, when the Republican Party, have been successful, its been as a party of ideas, Mr. Chen said, lamenting that much of the party was still taking a Trump-first approach.

Many Republicans are more focused on talking about him than about whats next, he said. And thats a very dangerous place to be.

In recent weeks, the party has been so submerged in internal conflict, and so captive to its fear of Mr. Trump, that it has delivered only a halting and partial critique of Mr. Bidens signature initiatives, including his request that Congress spend $1.9 trillion to fight the coronavirus pandemic and revive the economy.

Mr. Trumps tenure as an agent of political chaos is almost certainly not over. The former president and his advisers have already made it plain that they intend to use the 2022 midterm elections as an opportunity to reward allies and mete out revenge to those who crossed Mr. Trump. And hanging over the party is the possibility of another run for the White House in three years.

It remains to be seen how aggressively the partys leadership will seek to counter him. Mr. McConnell has told associates that he intends to wage a national battle in 2022 against far-right candidates and to defend incumbents targeted by Mr. Trump.

But by declining to convict Mr. Trump on Saturday, Mr. McConnell invited skepticism about how willing he might be to wage open war against Mr. Trump on the campaign trail.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi ridiculed Mr. McConnell for his ambivalent position after his floor speech, calling his remarks disingenuous and speculating that he had delivered them for the benefit of his financial backers who dislike Mr. Trump.

The vote by Republicans to acquit Mr. Trump, she said in a statement, was among the most dishonorable acts in our nations history.

Only a few senior Republicans have gone so far as to say that it is time for Mr. Trump to lose his lordly status in the party altogether. Representative Liz Cheney of Wyoming, the highest-ranking House Republican to support impeachment, said in a recent television interview that Mr. Trump does not have a role as a leader of our party going forward.

Several of the Republican senators who voted for conviction on Saturday thundered against Mr. Trump after he was acquitted, in terms that echoed Ms. Cheneys explanation last month of her own vote to impeach him.

By what he did and did not do, President Trump violated his oath of office to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States, said Senator Richard Burr of North Carolina, a senior lawmaker who is close to Mr. McConnell.

But the lineup of Republicans who voted for conviction was, on its own, a statement on Mr. Trumps political grip on the G.O.P. Only Senator Lisa Murkowski of Alaska is up for re-election next year, and she has survived grueling attacks from the right before.

The remainder of the group included two lawmakers who are retiring Mr. Burr and Senator Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania and three more who just won new terms in November and will not face voters again until the second half of the decade.

More typical of the Republican response was that of Senator Bill Hagerty of Tennessee, a Trump loyalist serving his first term. The trial, he said on Saturday, was merely a political performance aimed at undermining a successful chief executive.

In Washington, a quiet majority of Republican officials appears to be embracing the kind of wishful thinking that guided them throughout Mr. Trumps first campaign in 2016, and then through much of his presidency, insisting that he would soon be marginalized by his own outrageous conduct or that he would lack the discipline to make himself a durable political leader.

Several seemed to be looking to the criminal justice system as a means of sidelining Mr. Trump. Senator Thom Tillis of North Carolina, who voted for acquittal, noted in a statement, No president is above the law or immune from criminal prosecution, and that includes former President Trump.

Prosecution may not be a far-fetched scenario, given that Mr. Trump is facing multiple investigations by the local authorities in Georgia and New York into his political and business dealings.

But passing the buck has seldom paid off for Mr. Trumps adversaries, who learned repeatedly that the only sure way to rein him in was to beat him and his legislative proxies at the ballot box. That task has fallen almost entirely to Democrats, who captured the House in 2018 to put a check on Mr. Trump and then ejected him from the White House in November.

Still, Senator Kevin Cramer of North Dakota, a longtime Trump ally who has been critical of the former president since the November election, told reporters in the Capitol on Friday that he believed Mr. Trump would be weakened by the impeachment trial, even if the Senate opted not to convict him. (Mr. Cramer, who also called the trial the stupidest week in the Senate, voted for acquittal.)

Hes made it pretty difficult to gain a lot of support, Mr. Cramer said of Mr. Trump. Now, as you can tell, theres some support that will never leave, but I think that is a shrinking population and probably shrinks a little bit after this week.

An even more categorical prognosis came from Ms. Murkowski.

I just dont see how Donald Trump will be re-elected to the presidency again, Ms. Murkowski said.

If that projection seems anchored more in hope than in experience, there are good reasons for Republicans to root for Mr. Trumps exit from the political stage. He is intensely unpopular with a majority of the electorate, and polls consistently found that most Americans wanted to see him convicted.

Even in places where Mr. Trump retains a powerful following, there is a growing recognition that the partys loss of the White House and the Senate in 2020, and the House two years before that, did not come about by accident.

In Georgia, the site of some of the partys most stinging defeats of the 2020 campaign, Jason Shepherd, a candidate for state party chair, said he saw the G.O.P. as grappling with the kind of identity crisis that comes periodically with a loss after youve had a big personality leading the party, likening Mr. Trumps place in the party to that of Ronald Reagan.

Republicans, Mr. Shepherd said, had to find a way to appeal to the voters Mr. Trump brought into their coalition while communicating a message that the G.O.P. is bigger than Donald Trump. But he acknowledged that the next wave of candidates was already looking to the former president as a model.

Republicans are trying to position themselves as the next Donald Trump, he said. Maybe, in terms of personality, a kinder and gentler Donald Trump, but someone who will stand up to the left and fight for conservative principles that do unite Republicans.

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Republican Acquittal of Trump Is a Pivotal Moment for the Party - The New York Times

In the days after the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, the phone lines and websites of local election officials across the country were jumping: Tens of thousands of Republicans were calling or logging on to switch their party affiliations.

In California, more than 33,000 registered Republicans left the party during the three weeks after the Washington riot. In Pennsylvania, more than 12,000 voters left the G.O.P. in the past month, and more than 10,000 Republicans changed their registration in Arizona.

An analysis of January voting records by The New York Times found that nearly 140,000 Republicans had quit the party in 25 states that had readily available data (19 states do not have registration by party). Voting experts said the data indicated a stronger-than-usual flight from a political party after a presidential election, as well as the potential start of a damaging period for G.O.P. registrations as voters recoil from the Capitol violence and its fallout.

Among those who recently left the party are Juan Nunez, 56, an Army veteran in Mechanicsburg, Pa. He said he had long felt that the difference between the United States and many other countries was that campaign-season fighting ended on Election Day, when all sides would peacefully accept the result. The Jan. 6 riot changed that, he said.

What happened in D.C. that day, it broke my heart, said Mr. Nunez, a lifelong Republican who is preparing to register as an independent. It shook me to the core.

The biggest spikes in Republicans leaving the party came in the days after Jan. 6, especially in California, where there were 1,020 Republican changes on Jan. 5 and then 3,243 on Jan. 7. In Arizona, there were 233 Republican changes in the first five days of January, and 3,317 in the next week. Most of the Republicans in these states and others switched to unaffiliated status.

Voter rolls often change after presidential elections, when registrations sometimes shift toward the winners party or people update their old affiliations to correspond to their current party preferences, often at a department of motor vehicles. Other states remove inactive voters, deceased voters or those who moved out of state from all parties, and lump those people together with voters who changed their own registrations. Of the 25 states surveyed by The Times, Nevada, Kansas, Utah and Oklahoma had combined such voter list maintenance with registration changes, so their overall totals would not be limited to changes that voters made themselves. Other states may have done so, as well, but did not indicate in their public data.

Among Democrats, 79,000 have left the party since early January.

But the tumult at the Capitol, and the historic unpopularity of former President Donald J. Trump, have made for an intensely fluid period in American politics. Many Republicans denounced the pro-Trump forces that rioted on Jan. 6, and 10 Republican House members voted to impeach Mr. Trump. Sizable numbers of Republicans now say they support key elements of President Bidens stimulus package; typically, the opposing party is wary if not hostile toward the major policy priorities of a new president.

Since this is such a highly unusual activity, it probably is indicative of a larger undercurrent thats happening, where there are other people who are likewise thinking that they no longer feel like theyre part of the Republican Party, but they just havent contacted election officials to tell them that they might change their party registration, said Michael P. McDonald, a professor of political science at the University of Florida. So this is probably a tip of an iceberg.

But, he cautioned, it could also be the vocal never Trump reality simply coming into focus as Republicans finally took the step of changing their registration, even though they hadnt supported the president and his party since 2016.

Kevin Madden, a former Republican operative who worked on Mitt Romneys 2012 presidential campaign, fits this trend line, though he was ahead of the recent exodus. He said he changed his registration to independent a year ago, after watching what he called the harassment of career foreign service officials at Mr. Trumps first impeachment trial.

Its not a birthright and its not a religion, Mr. Madden said of party affiliation. Political parties should be more like your local condo association. If the condo association starts to act in a way thats inconsistent with your beliefs, you move.

As for the overall trend of Republicans abandoning their party, he said that it was too soon to say if it spelled trouble in the long term, but that the numbers couldnt be overlooked. In all the time I worked in politics, he said, the thing that always worried me was not the position but the trend line.

Some G.O.P. officials noted the significant gains in registration that Republicans have seen recently, including before the 2020 election, and noted that the party had rebounded quickly in the past.

You never want to lose registrations at any point, and clearly the January scene at the Capitol exacerbated already considerable issues Republicans are having with the center of the electorate, said Josh Holmes, a top political adviser to Senator Mitch McConnell, the minority leader. Todays receding support really pales in comparison to the challenges of a decade ago, however, when Republicans went from absolute irrelevance to a House majority within 18 months.

He added, If Republicans can reunite behind basic conservative principles and stand up to the liberal overreach of the Biden administration, things will change a lot quicker than people think.

In North Carolina, the shift was immediately noticeable. The state experienced a notable surge in Republicans changing their party affiliation: 3,007 in the first week after the riot, 2,850 the next week and 2,120 the week after that. A consistent 650 or so Democrats changed their party affiliation each week.

But state G.O.P. officials downplayed any significance in the changes, and expressed confidence that North Carolina, a battleground state that has leaned Republican recently, will remain in their column.

Relatively small swings in the voter registration over a short period of time in North Carolinas pool of over seven million registered voters are not particularly concerning, Tim Wigginton, the communications director for the state party, said in a statement, predicting that North Carolina would continue to vote Republican at the statewide level.

In Arizona, 10,174 Republicans have changed their party registration since the attack as the state party has shifted ever further to the right, as reflected by its decision to censure three Republicans Gov. Doug Ducey, former Senator Jeff Flake and Cindy McCain for various acts deemed disloyal to Mr. Trump. The party continues to raise questions about the 2020 election, and last week Republicans in the State Legislature backed arresting elections officials from Maricopa County for refusing to comply with wide-ranging subpoenas for election equipment and materials.

It is those actions, some Republican strategists in Arizona argue, that prompted the drop in G.O.P. voter registrations in the state.

The exodus thats happening right now, based on my instincts and all the people who are calling me out here, is that theyre leaving as a result of the acts of sedition that took place and the continued questioning of the Arizona vote, said Chuck Coughlin, a Republican strategist in Arizona.

For Heidi Ushinski, 41, the decision to leave the Arizona Republican Party was easy. After the election, she said, she registered as a Democrat because the Arizona G.O.P. has just lost its mind and wouldnt let go of this fraudulent election stuff.

The G.O.P. used to stand for what we felt were morals, just character, and integrity, she added. I think that the outspoken G.O.P. coming out of Arizona has lost that.

This is the third time Ms. Ushinski has switched her party registration. She usually re-registers to be able to vote against candidates. This time around, she did it because she did not feel that there was a place for people like her in the new Republican Party.

I look up to the Jeffry Flakes and the Cindy McCains, she said. To see the G.O.P. go after them, specifically, when they speak in ways that I resonate with just shows me that theres nothing left in the G.O.P. for me to stand for. And its really sad.

Mr. Nunez, the Army veteran in Pennsylvania, said his disgust with the Capitol riot was compounded when Republicans in Congress continued to push back on sending stimulus checks and staunchly opposed raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour.

They were so quick to bail out corporations, giving big companies money, but continue to fight over giving money to people in need, said Mr. Nunez, who plans to change parties this week. Also, Im a business owner and I cannot imagine living on $7 an hour. We have to be fair.

Though the volume of voters leaving the G.O.P. varied from state to state, nearly every state surveyed showed a noticeable increase. In Colorado, roughly 4,700 Republican voters changed their registration status in the nine days after the riot. In New Hampshire, about 10,000 left the partys voter rolls in the past month, and in Louisiana around 5,500 did as well.

Even in states with no voter registration by party, some Republicans have been vocal about leaving.

In Michigan, Mayor Michael Taylor of Sterling Heights, the fourth-largest city in the state, already had one foot out the Republican Party door before the 2020 elections. Even as a lifelong Republican, he couldnt bring himself to vote for Mr. Trump for president after backing him in 2016. He instead cast a ballot for Mr. Biden.

After the election, the relentless promotion of conspiracy theories by G.O.P. leaders, and the attack at the Capitol, pushed him all the way out of the party.

There was enough before the election to swear off the G.O.P., but the incredible events since have made it clear to me that I dont fit into this party, Mr. Taylor said. It wasnt just complaining about election fraud anymore. They have taken control of the Capitol at the behest of the president of the United States. And if there was a clear break with the party in my mind, that was it.

Mr. Taylor plans to run for re-election this year, and even though its a nonpartisan race, community members are well aware of the shift in his thinking since the last citywide election in 2017.

He already has two challengers, including a staunch Trump supporter, who has begun criticizing Mr. Taylor for his lack of support for the former president.

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Why Thousands of Republicans Are Leaving the Party - The New York Times

As the Senate nears its second vote on whether or not to convict former President Trump and bar him from holding future office, the outcome, in spite of a riveting prosecution and a chaotic defense, appears to be a foregone conclusion. Only a handful of Republican senators seem poised to vote to convict Trump, far short of the 17 Republicans that would be needed in addition to all the Democrats. So far speculation about which Republicans may join the Democrats is based on pure political calculus. Will senators who have announced their retirement such as Ohios Rob Portman (or who plan to retire but havent announced yet) feel free to vote for conviction? Will senators (like Louisianas Bill Cassidy) who recently won re-election and who therefore have six years to soothe the angry Trump supporters in their state vote for conviction?

The term refers to a book by that name written by then-Senator and later President John F. Kennedy in 1956. In it he tells the story of eight United States senators, from different political parties and different regions of the country, who at one or more points in their career took a highly public stand which infuriated the voters in their political party or in their state. For many of these men, courage was its own reward. The true democracy, writes Kennedy, puts faith in the peoplefaith that the people will not simply elect men who will represent their views ably and faithfully, but also elect men who will exercise their conscientious judgment [p. 264]. And for some of them, a courageous vote, one which brought about the fury of their constituents, did not end their political career at all.

For instance, when John Quincy Adams was a senator from Massachusetts he broke from his partyThe Federalist Partyover the issue of retaliating against the British with an embargo that cut off international trade. His home state, a center of trading and shipping, was so furious at him that the legislature threw him out of the Senate a full nine months before the end of his term.[1] But in spite of that setback, Adams went on to win the presidency in 1824 and after that served in the House of Representatives until he died.

Sam Houston, one of the first two United States senators from Texas, was also dismissed from the Senate by his legislature whose members were furious over his votes for measures designed to preserve the union and prevent civil war. For his vote on the Kansas-Nebraska Act, Houston was denounced as a traitor. Nonetheless he stated, It was the most unpopular vote I ever gave but the wisest and most patriotic (p. 124). In spite of the fury directed at him Houston was returned to the Senate two years later, where he served until being elected Governor of Texas.

And Senator Lucius Lamar of Mississippi shocked the nation by giving a eulogy full of praise for radical republican Charles Sumner of Massachusetts. He also supported a series of measures which were anathema to his constituents in the fractious and dangerous years following the Civil War, often siding with the North. But he survived politically. He was re-elected to the Senate, and went on to be Secretary of the Interior and a justice of the Supreme Court. When he was under attack for his views he had this to say:

The Liberty of this country and its great interests will never be secure if its public men become mere menials to do the biddings of their constituents instead of being representatives in the true sense of the word, looking to the lasting prosperity and future interests of the whole country (p. 197).

As the Senate vote looms the big question is this: will there be any profiles in courage among Republican senators? Kennedys book from over half a century ago teaches us that there are more important things than winning re-election and that political courage does not always mean political failure.

[1] In those days state legislatures elected United States senators.

Excerpt from:

The Senate impeachment vote: Will there be any Republican profiles in courage? - Brookings Institution

US President Donald Trump looks on after presenting the Presidential Medal of Freedom to Celtics basketball legend Bob Cousy in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, DC on August 22, 2019.

Mandel Ngan | AFP | Getty Images

A CNBC survey conducted in the days before former President Donald Trump's impeachment trial finds a large share of Republicans want him to remain head of their party, but a majority of Americans want him out of politics.

The CNBC All-America Economic Survey shows 54% of Americans want Trump "to remove himself from politics entirely." That was the sentiment of 81% of Democrats and 47% of Independents, but only 26% of Republicans.

When it comes to Republicans, 74% want him to stay active in some way, including 48% who want him to remain head of the Republican Party, 11% who want him to start a third party, and 12% who say he should remain active in politics but not as head of any party.

"If we're talking about Donald Trump's future, at the moment, the survey shows he still has this strong core support within his own party who really want him to continue to be their leader," said Jay Campbell, a partner with Hart Research and the Democratic pollster for the survey.

But Micah Roberts, the survey's Republican pollster, and a partner with Public Opinion Strategies, emphasized the change from when Trump was president. Polls before the election regularly showed Trump with GOP approval ratings around 90%, meaning at least some Republicans have defected from Trump.

The online poll of 1,000 Americans nationwide has a margin of error of plus or minus 3.5%. It was conducted Feb. 2-7, before Trump's trial in the Senate for insurrection and fomenting the riots of Jan. 6 at the Capitol. In the unlikely event of conviction, Trump could be barred by the Senate from ever holding federal public office again.

The poll shows Trump retains strong support among Americans without college degrees, a key demographic for the GOP: 89% of the group want him to remain in politics, including 52% who want him to stay head of the Republican Party. That's the highest percentage of any group, and a potential warning sign for Republican Party leaders should they choose to vote to convict Trump.

Original post:

A large share of Republicans want Trump to remain head of the party, CNBC survey shows - CNBC

(Reuters) - Dozens of former Republican officials, who view the party as unwilling to stand up to former President Donald Trump and his attempts to undermine U.S. democracy, are in talks to form a center-right breakaway party, four people involved in the discussions told Reuters.

FILE PHOTO: U.S. President Donald Trump waves as he arrives at Palm Beach International Airport in West Palm Beach, Florida, U.S., January 20, 2021. REUTERS/Carlos Barria

The early stage discussions include former elected Republicans, former officials in the Republican administrations of Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, George W. Bush and Trump, ex-Republican ambassadors and Republican strategists, the people involved say.

More than 120 of them held a Zoom call last Friday to discuss the breakaway group, which would run on a platform of principled conservatism, including adherence to the Constitution and the rule of law - ideas those involved say have been trashed by Trump.

The plan would be to run candidates in some races but also to endorse center-right candidates in others, be they Republicans, independents or Democrats, the people say.

Evan McMullin, who was chief policy director for the House Republican Conference and ran as an independent in the 2016 presidential election, told Reuters that he co-hosted the Zoom call with former officials concerned about Trumps grip on Republicans and the nativist turn the party has taken.

Three other people confirmed to Reuters the call and the discussions for a potential splinter party, but asked not to be identified.

Among the call participants were John Mitnick, general counsel for the Department of Homeland Security under Trump; former Republican congressman Charlie Dent; Elizabeth Neumann, deputy chief of staff in the Homeland Security Department under Trump; and Miles Taylor, another former Trump homeland security official.

The talks highlight the wide intraparty rift over Trumps false claims of election fraud and the deadly Jan. 6 storming of the U.S. Capitol. Most Republicans remain fiercely loyal to the former president, but others seek a new direction for the party.

The House of Representatives impeached Trump on Jan. 13 on a charge of inciting an insurrection by exhorting thousands of supporters to march on the Capitol on the day Congress was gathered to certify Democrat Joe Bidens election victory.

Call participants said they were particularly dismayed by the fact that more than half of the Republicans in Congress - eight senators and 139 House representatives - voted to block certification of Bidens election victory just hours after the Capitol siege.

Most Republican senators have also indicated they will not support the conviction of Trump in this weeks Senate impeachment trial.

Large portions of the Republican Party are radicalizing and threatening American democracy, McMullin told Reuters. The party needs to recommit to truth, reason and founding ideals or there clearly needs to be something new.

THESE LOSERS

Asked about the discussions for a third party, Jason Miller, a Trump spokesman, said: These losers left the Republican Party when they voted for Joe Biden.

A representative for the Republican National Committee referred to a recent statement from Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel.

If we continue to attack each other and focus on attacking on fellow Republicans, if we have disagreements within our party, then we are losing sight of 2022 (elections), McDaniel said on Fox News last month.

The only way were going to win is if we come together, she said.

The Biden White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

McMullin said just over 40% of those on last weeks Zoom call backed the idea of a breakaway, national third party. Another option under discussion is to form a faction that would operate either inside the current Republican Party or outside it.

Names under consideration for a new party include the Integrity Party and the Center Right Party. If it is decided instead to form a faction, one name under discussion is the Center Right Republicans.

Members are aware that the U.S. political landscape is littered with the remains of previous failed attempts at national third parties.

But there is a far greater hunger for a new political party out there than I have ever experienced in my lifetime, one participant said.

Reporting by Tim Reid; Additional reporting by Jarrett Renshaw; Editing by Soyoung Kim and Peter Cooney

Originally posted here:

Exclusive: Dozens of former Republican officials in talks to form anti-Trump third party - Reuters

Were looking for solutions, said Mr. Young, who until recently was the chairman of the Senate Republican campaign arm and is eager to turn back to policy.

Mr. Schatz, who is friendly with some of these senators, put a finer point on their motivation: If Im going to suffer through the Trump era, then I may as well enact some laws.

In Louisiana, though, the thoroughly Trumpified Republican Party expects only continued fealty to the former president.

Mr. Cassidy confronted immediate criticism for his vote and comments on Tuesday.

I received many calls this afternoon from Republicans in Louisiana who think that @SenBillCassidy did a terrible job today, Blake Miguez, the State House Republican leader, wrote on Twitter, repurposing Mr. Cassidys critique of Mr. Trumps lawyers. I understand their frustrations and join them in their disappointment.

Even a fellow member of the Louisiana congressional delegation, Representative Mike Johnson, weighed in. A lot of people from back home are calling me about it right now, noted Mr. Johnson, a Republican, who said he was surprised by Mr. Cassidys move.

Perhaps he should not have been.

As Stephanie Grace, the longtime political columnist for The Times-Picayune in New Orleans, wrote in a December piece anticipating Mr. Cassidys shift, he has long been part of bipartisan efforts to solve problems, even if his solutions probably go too far for some Republicans and stop way short of what many Democrats want.

Mr. Cassidy, a former Democrat like Mr. Kennedy and many Southern Republicans their age, has long been less than dogmatic on health care, a viewpoint he formed working in his states charity hospitals. This has always been more than a little ironic to Louisiana political insiders, given that in 2014 he unseated Senator Mary Landrieu, a Democrat, thanks to conservative attacks on former President Barack Obama and the Affordable Care Act. (On Wednesday, Ms. Landrieu said of Mr. Cassidy, Many people in Louisiana are proud of him, including me.)

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Why Bill Cassidy Broke With Senate Republicans and Backed Trumps Trial - The New York Times