Splits are good for bananas, but not for political parties

It is often said that everything Donald Trump touches dies, and now that is happening to the Republican Party. We’ve been noting for a long time that that GOP is having an intra-party civil war, one that is frequently under-reported in the media. At this time, however, the Republican Civil War is getting difficult to ignore. After Trump‘s second impeachment trial ended last Saturday, Republican U.S. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, who had just voted to acquit Trump, tried to have it both ways by bashing Trump in a speech on the Senate floor. According to McConnell:

Former President Trump’s actions preceding the riot were a disgraceful dereliction of duty…. The people who stormed this building believed they were acting on the wishes and instructions of their President. And their having that belief was a foreseeable consequence of the growing crescendo of false statements, conspiracy theories, and reckless hyperbole which the defeated President kept shouting into the largest megaphone on planet Earth. The issue is not only the President’s intemperate language on January 6th….  It was also the entire manufactured atmosphere of looming catastrophe; the increasingly wild myths about a reverse landslide election that was being stolen in some secret coup by our now-President…. The leader of the free world cannot spend weeks thundering that shadowy forces are stealing our country and then feign surprise when people believe him and do reckless things…. This was an intensifying crescendo of conspiracy theories, orchestrated by an outgoing president who seemed determined to either overturn the voters’ decision or else torch our institutions on the way out.

On Tuesday, Trump blasted back at McConnell in a written statement released by his “Save America” PAC. According to Trump’s statement:

The Republican Party can never again be respected or strong with political “leaders” like Sen. Mitch McConnell at its helm. McConnell’s dedication to business as usual, status quo policies, together with his lack of political insight, wisdom, skill, and personality, has rapidly driven him from Majority Leader to Minority Leader, and it will only get worse. The Democrats and Chuck Schumer play McConnell like a fiddle—they’ve never had it so good—and they want to keep it that way!…. He [McConnell] doesn’t have what it takes, never did, and never will…. Mitch is a dour, sullen, and unsmiling political hack, and if Republican Senators are going to stay with him, they will not win again.

It’s not like the Republican Party to destroy itself with such open attacks by GOP politicians against each other. Often the media have quite the opposite narrative of “Democrats in Disarray,” while the Republicans like to march in lockstep to party authority. This time, however, the tables are turned, thanks to Donald Trump. Let us not forget that under Trump, the Republicans have lost the U.S. House, the U.S. Senate and the White House, all within the span of just two years. As we stated after the Trump-incited terrorist attack on the U.S. Capitol on January 6:

[M]any Republican politicians quickly had to make a choice: is their future political career or legacy safer siding with or against Trump?

A significant number of Republicans indeed got fed up, and formed groups such as Republican Voters Against Trump and The Lincoln Project, with some even abandoning the Republican Party, saying it had “become the party of Trump.” There is now talk of the GOP splitting apart, and a third party being formed (possibly headed by Trump), which would likely throw presidential and Congressional elections to the Democrats for years. With Trump out of office, the question is whether Republicans will continue to let him take their party down, or whether sanity will prevail in the GOP.

Photo by Sodanie Chea, used under Creative Commons license. https://is.gd/rlHwFV