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U.S. Politics- January 27, 2021
TrueNewsBlog- TNB
Democrats – Republicans- Trump -Stimulus-Filibuster
By: Nathaniel Ballantyne
(TrueNewsBlog) – Both political parties are mired in troubles and confusions. Democrats are currently in disarray trying to figure out the future. They are asking themselves whether they should use their new powers (they control Congress and the White House) for More stimulus? Use reconciliation? Kill the filibuster? Abandon outreach to Republicans?
Republicans have more vexing problems with long term effects. The question they must find an answer to is what to do with Donald Trump. The all-consuming conversation about this single political actor is eclipsing everything else on the right: policy debates, political strategy, the advancement of fresh faces.
The spate of threatened primary challenges ripping the party apart are uniformly about loyalty to Trump. The state-level intra-party spats that have made headlines in Arizona, Kentucky and Oregon are not about raising up the best political strategists to steer the local parties forward; they are about condemning Republicans who have criticized Trump.
The GOP’s potential 2024 aspirants (Ted Cruz, Marc Robio, Nikki Halley, Josh Hawley, Mike Pence) are frozen in place, still being asked to respond to every scrap of Trump news and stuck in an endless cycle of political calculation about whether it’s safe to unyoke themselves from Trump.
Sen. Mitch McConnell suggested earlier last week that he’d finally had enough when, in his words, a “mob” of protesters that “was fed lies” stormed Congress after “they were provoked by the president.” McConnell, the NYT reported , “has concluded that President Trump committed impeachable offenses and believes that Democrats’ move to impeach him will make it easier to purge Mr. Trump from the party.”
He never said it out loud, but his team conspicuously declined to contradict the report (and still hasn’t — we checked Tuesday night), and he seemed to be signaling that it was safe for Republicans to contemplate convicting Trump. A window opened for the GOP to rid itself of the former president. But a week later everything has changed again.
Most Republicans have moved on from their brief moment of reflection about why Jan. 6 happened and replaced those concerns with fears about the left using the event to crush anyone who ever supported Trump. In their view, is Big Tech’s deplatforming campaign, and is McConnell was quickly drowned out by the same populist forces that have convulsed America — and that he has struggled to control — for five years. Rep. MARJORIE TAYLOR GREENE (R-Ga.) unironically said that the “vast majority” of Republicans “are no longer loyal to the GOP” but that their “loyalty now lies with Donald J. Trump.” Rep. MATT GAETZ (R-Fla.) is on his way to Wyoming to troll Rep. LIZ CHENEY (R-Wyo.) and declared that impeachment was just a part of left-wing cancel culture.
On Tuesday, when Sen. RAND PAUL (R-Ky.) forced a vote on whether the trial was legitimate, all eyes turned to McConnell. He voted with all but five of his Republican colleagues in favor of Paul’s objection declaring that the trial was unconstitutional.
Over half of Republican voters (56%) believe that Trump should either probably or definitely run for president again in 2024. Just over a third of Republican voters (36%) think he probably or definitely should not.
Republicans and Republican-leaning independent voters are closely split between the Republican Party and the notional Patriot Party that Trump recently floated. A third (33%) said they are more interested in being a member of the Republican Party, and 30% said they would be more interested in being a member of the Patriot Party. A small share (11%) expressed interest in neither party.
McConnell made a point of telling reporters Tuesday that the last time he spoke to Trump was way back on Dec. 15. He declined to answer a question from CNN’s MANU RAJU about whether he believed Trump’s actions were impeachable. So perhaps the window McConnell opened is not fully closed.
