Jonah Goldberg warns Republicans that all they accomplish by rushing to the president’s defense whenever he says or does something indefensible is convince more Americans that “Trumpism” isn’t confined to Donald Trump.
That damage won’t be erased by another record stock-market closing or an uptick in the GDP numbers. It will outlive The Trump Show for generations.
And yet. Read more
Senior Republicans have castigated President Donald Trump in the last week, some implicitly, others explicitly.
Now that Donald Trump’s Rasputin, Steve Bannon, has declared open season on Republicans, will the party finally see its president for the saboteur he is?
Mike Allen and Jonathan Swan report for Axios that Bannon is recruiting right-wing primary challengers against every incumbent Republican senator running for reelection next year except Ted Cruz. He told Fox News: “Nobody’s safe. We’re coming after all of them.”
Opposing the leadership of Trump critic Mitch McConnell is “a de facto litmus test in Bannon’s recruitment.”
Allen and Swan conclude:
If Bannon were to field the slate he envisions, the Republican Party would have a civil war on its hands that makes 2010 look like a tea party.
Donald Trump is splitting America’s Republican Party in two — and his side is winning.
NBC News and The Wall Street Journal asked Republican voters if they consider themselves to be a supporter of the president first or a supporter of the Republican Party. 58 percent said Trump, 38 percent the party.
The Trump supporters are more likely to hail from rural areas and to be men while Republican Party supporters are more likely to be women and residents of the suburbs.
CNN found a similar divide: Trump’s support is strongest among old white voters without a college education. Republicans under the age of fifty with a degree are disappointed in him.
These trends portend a realignment of America’s two-party system in which the Democrats become the party of the affluent and the optimistic and the Republicans a coalition of the left behind.
Before such a realignment can happen, though, the Republicans need to break up. Read more
In August 2016, I was penning an article titled “The Coming Republican Civil War”. The premise was simple: after a self-inflicted Trumpian defeat in November, the party of Lincoln would tear itself asunder assigning blame and shedding factions.
But Hillary lost. For a few brief months, the Grand Old Party looked triumphant.
Not so much anymore.
The long-term trajectory of the Republican Party isn’t great; factional infighting has already sunk several attempts to roll back the Affordable Care Act and by the end of the month we’ll know just how deep the divides go should tax reform and the Graham-Cassidy health-care bill fail. Read more
Donald Trump is on a collision course with his own party.
Republicans have publicly rebuked the president for threatening to shut down the government if they don’t fund construction of a southern border wall.
Building a wall between Mexico and the United States was Trump’s signature campaign promise. But it is an impractical plan that few lawmakers are willing to spend billions of dollars on.
When they return from summer recess in two weeks, Republicans will have about twelve working days to pass a budget that Trump must sign to keep the government running.
If Trump makes good on his threat (and he seldom does), it could trigger a civil war inside the party — which he is most likely to win. Read more
Firing Reince Priebus as his chief of staff has allowed American president Donald Trump to put even more distance between himself and the party that elected him, argues Tim Alberta at Politico:
More and more, Trump talks as though there are Democrats and Republicans — and him, a party of one.
With the exception of his vice president, Mike Pence, none of Trump’s remaining confidants have a history in the party.
Many, including the president himself, weren’t even Republicans until one or two years ago.
Republicans must start to wonder what, other than winning the presidency and putting a conservative, Neil Gorsuch, on the Supreme Court, Trump has done for the party? Read more