Mediaboss Marketing

President Trump speaks to supporters on Jan. 6 before pro-Trump extremists launched a violent attack on the U.S. Capitol. Trump's role in encouraging the siege over false claims of election fraud has hardened divisions in the Republican Party. Brendan Smialowski/AFP via Getty Images hide caption

President Trump speaks to supporters on Jan. 6 before pro-Trump extremists launched a violent attack on the U.S. Capitol. Trump's role in encouraging the siege over false claims of election fraud has hardened divisions in the Republican Party.

In a matter of hours on Jan. 6, the Republican Party went from shrugging off its loss of the White House to a party in crisis.

It was becoming clear just before the violent insurrection at the Capitol that the party had lost two Senate runoff elections in Georgia, making President Trump the first president since Herbert Hoover whose party lost the White House, the House and the Senate in one term. And plenty of Republicans blamed Trump for the Democrats' success in Georgia.

Trump's own defeat means the GOP has failed to get a majority of votes in seven of the last eight presidential elections.

Now, Trump leaves office as the only president to be impeached twice, and the House vote against Trump over the Capitol insurrection marked the most bipartisan impeachment in U.S. history.

The Republican fault lines go in every direction: between the grassroots and the establishment, between big donors and aspiring presidential candidates, between House leaders and Senate leaders.

Republican pollster Frank Luntz says he has seen intraparty battles before, "but this one is so deep and so polarizing and people are so passionate about it I don't know how you heal it. I don't know how you bring these people together."

The biggest internal division right now, says Luntz, is between Republicans who voted for impeachment and voters who opposed it. He found in research this week that 43% of Trump voters say they would definitely vote against any lawmaker who supports impeachment.

"That makes it impossible for Republicans to put together a majority by 2022, and in fact, that's a direct threat to the existence of the Republican Party overall," Luntz said.

Trump's red line

At the Jan. 6 rally, Trump and his son, Don Jr., went even further, threatening a primary election defeat for any Republican who failed to back Trump's effort to have Congress overturn President-elect Joe Biden's election.

"This isn't their Republican Party anymore," the president's son said. "This is Donald Trump's Republican Party."

And that's one of the reasons that, even after the violent insurrection at the Capitol, two-thirds of House Republicans and a total of eight senators voted to throw out some of the election results.

Those votes show an even deeper, more fundamental rift in the party says Stuart Stevens, a former Republican consultant and current adviser to the anti-Trump Lincoln Project. He thinks the big divide is between authoritarians and those who believe in democracy.

"I think it's just a straight-up red line," said Stevens. "This is so much greater than any differences over tax policy or trade policy. It's a fundamental belief in whether or not you want to continue the American experiment. A large portion of the Republican Party has decided they are for democracy if that means they win, and they're against it if it means they lose. Which is to say, you don't believe in democracy."

These splits are playing out not just on Capitol Hill but among Republicans all over the country.

Jean Evans, the former executive director of the Missouri Republican Party and previously a state legislator, resigned at the end of last year partly due to pressure from within the GOP to back Trump's efforts to overturn the election.

"The demands that we stand up and support Trump and facilitate these sorts of actions became increasingly hostile and frightening," Evans said. "And then when I saw the president tweeting for everyone to come to D.C. on the 6th, I thought, 'What is he doing?' "

In Missouri, just like nationally, polls show vast majorities of Republicans believe the lie that the election was stolen from Trump.

The party is split between those who accept reality and those who don't, a problem that Evans thinks only Trump can fix.

"For the party to move forward, the best thing that could happen really would be for Trump to speak to his supporters and tell them that he accepts the results [and] they should, too," she said.

Survival mode

Trump has condemned the violence at the Capitol, but he hasn't acknowledged that Biden won legitimately. Barring that, Stevens thinks, the only solution is for voters to reject Republicans just like they rejected Trump.

"You have to beat them," he said. "The United States Capitol was taken over by a terrorist gang of cop killers, and the Republican Party still has not come to grips with what that means. If you can be president of the United States, incite a riot to oppose a legal election and take over the Capitol, and that's not a high crime and misdemeanor, I'm not sure what is."

But other Republicans think the party can heal itself.

Ralph Reed, chairman of the Faith and Freedom Coalition, says the party has and will continue to reject violent actors, but that it has to work with those who believe the lie that the election was stolen.

"They're going to have to be accommodated, and they're going to have to find a way, if they want to be effective, to hewn off some of the rough edges," Reed said. "But our attitude needs to be one of welcoming, not pushing them away."

Pushing away those who are supremely loyal to Trump would seem to be out of the question, since they represent such a big chunk of the party's base. But Reed thinks the party can address their concerns and convince them that in a democracy, it's possible for the Republican Party to lose a legitimate election.

"Political parties have a very strong instinct for their own preservation. So, when a political party is taking a position that marginalizes it, it tends to self-correct," he said. "It evolves, it adapts, it becomes what it has to become in order to win and therefore survive."

Regardless of how, or whether, the Republican Party resolves its internal splits, the process will take time, says Frank Luntz: "You have a segment of American society that does not accept the election outcome and is going to continue to speak up, is going to continue to agitate. And that's going to make this a very unstable period for months and perhaps even years."

That means a long, unstable period not just for the Republican Party, but for the American political system as a whole.

See original here:
Republicans Wonder How, And If, They Can Pull The Party Back Together - NPR

The unbreakable wall of Republican support that encouraged and enabled Donald Trumps norm-shattering presidency cracked on Wednesday.

A group of 10 House Republicans joined Democrats to impeach Trump for inciting a deadly riot at the U.S. Capitol last week. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., hasnt ruled out convicting Trump during a trial later this month, giving fellow Republicans cover if they chose that option.

The vast majority of House Republicans stood by Trump during the impeachment vote. But in a sign of the presidents weakening grip on the party, even some of those who opposed impeachment condemned Trumps behavior and blamed him for sparking the insurrection.

The president bears responsibility for Wednesdays attack on Congress by mob rioters, said House Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., who has been a staunch Trump ally.

Its a dramatic turn of events for a president who has enjoyed virtually unyielding loyalty from his party and was expected to play a key role in shaping the GOPs future. But the impeachment vote demonstrated how challenging the coming months may be for Republicans.

While some are clearly eager to move into a post-Trump era, theres still a large block that will stand with him even after he fueled a riot. Many House Republicans downplayed the significance of the insurrection and Trumps role, drawing false comparisons between the deadly storming of the Capitol by a largely white mob and isolated incidents of looting and violence related to civil rights protests last summer.

The left in America has incited far more violence than the right, said Rep. Matt Gaetz, a Florida Republican who was among the 197 who opposed impeachment.

Still, the stunning nature of the mob violence shook many lawmakers. Rep. Liz Cheney, the No. 3 Republican in the House, gave rank-and-file conservatives the green light to abandon Trump in a scathing statement on the eve of the vote.

There has never been a greater betrayal by a president of the United States of his office and his oath to the Constitution, she said.

More ominously for Trump, McConnell believes Trump committed impeachable offenses and considers Democrats impeachment drive an opportunity to reduce the divisive, chaotic presidents hold on the GOP, a Republican strategist told The Associated Press on Wednesday.

In a note to his fellow Republican senators on Wednesday, McConnell confirmed that he had not ruled out voting to convict him in the upcoming Senate trial, which will spill into Bidens presidency.

While the press has been full of speculation, I have not made a final decision on how I will vote and I intend to listen to the legal arguments when they are presented to the Senate, McConnell said.

McConnell also called major Republican donors this weekend to gauge their thinking about Trump and was adamantly told that Trump had clearly crossed a line. McConnell told them he was through with Trump, said the strategist, who demanded anonymity to describe McConnells conversations. The New York Times first reported McConnells views on impeachment on Tuesday.

A growing collection of corporations, many of them reliably Republican donors, have promised to stop sending political donations to any of the 147 Republicans who perpetuated Trumps false claims of election fraud by voting to reject Bidens victory last week.

The presidents remaining allies warn that Republicans who cross him publicly risk a conservative backlash in their next elections.

Public and private polling shows Republican grassroots voters strongly oppose impeachment, said Jason Miller, a Trump senior adviser. Any Republican senator or congressman voting for impeachment will be held accountable in their next primary election.

Its unclear whether the chaos in Washington represents an existential threat to the party, but it almost certainly threatens to undermine the GOPs short-term political goals. History suggests that Republicans, as the minority party in Washington, should regain control of the House or Senate in 2022.

Trump made no public appearances on Wednesday. But since last weeks deadly attack, he has publicly and privately denied any responsibility for the insurrection.

During a brief trip to the U.S.-Mexico border on Tuesday, he offered those who support impeachment an ominous warning: Be careful what you wish for.

Shortly before the Houses final vote, he issued a written statement calling on his supporters not to engage in any more violence in the rounds of new protests planned for the coming days.

I call on ALL Americans to help ease tensions and calm tempers, Trump wrote.

At the same time, a collection of ambitious Republicans are trying to position themselves to run for the White House in 2024. They are also contending with Trumps legacy.

One of them, Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan, reminded reporters on Tuesday that hes condemned the Trump presidency from the very beginning.

Ive been in the same place Ive been for the whole four years. A lot of people have just changed their position, Hogan said, while vowing not to leave the GOP. I dont want to leave the party and let these people who did a hostile takeover four years ago take over.

Despite Hogans confidence, he is far less popular among Trumps loyal base a group likely to hold great sway in the selection of the partys next presidential nominee than the likes of Sens. Ted Cruz of Texas and Josh Hawley of Missouri, two other 2024 prospects who voted to reject Bidens victory last week, even after the uprising.

Republican leaders do not know how to move forward, Republican pollster Frank Luntz said. Everybodys afraid that Donald Trump will tell people to come after them, but they also realize theyre losing the center of America. Theyre trapped.

___

Associated Press writers Jill Colvin in Alamo, Texas, and Alan Fram and Zeke Miller in Washington contributed to this report.

Excerpt from:
Trump's wall of GOP support breaks during impeachment vote - The Associated Press

As the House voted Wednesday to formally charge President Trump with inciting violence against the government of the United States, exactly one week after the Capitol was breached by an angry mob of Trump loyalists, 10 Republicans cast their votes in favor of impeachment.

It was the largest number of lawmakers to ever vote to impeach a president from their own party; just five Democrats voted to impeach President Bill Clinton, and not a single Republican voted in favor of impeaching Mr. Trump in 2019.

House Republican leaders said they would not formally lobby members of the party against voting to impeach the president this time.

Representative John Katko of New York was the first Republican to publicly announce that he would back impeachment. Not holding the president accountable for his actions would be a direct threat to the future of our democracy, he said.

Representative Liz Cheney of Wyoming, the No. 3 House Republican, said on Tuesday evening that she would vote to impeach, citing the presidents role in an insurrection that caused death and destruction in the most sacred space in our republic.

Representative Adam Kinzinger of Illinois, a frequent critic of Mr. Trump, joined his Republican colleagues on Tuesday evening, saying the nation was in uncharted waters. He said that Mr. Trump encouraged an angry mob to storm the United States Capitol to stop the counting of electoral votes.

Representative Fred Upton of Michigan said he would vote to impeach after Mr. Trump expressed no regrets for what had happened at the Capitol.

Representative Jaime Herrera Beutler of Washington State said, The presidents offenses, in my reading of the Constitution, were impeachable based on the indisputable evidence we already have. (An earlier version of this item incorrectly stated which state Ms. Herrera Beutler represents.)

Representative Dan Newhouse of Washington State announced that he was backing impeachment, attacking his partys core argument, that the process was being rushed. I will not use process as an excuse, he said during the impeachment debate, to cheers and applause from Democrats. Mr. Newhouse also offered a mea culpa, chiding himself and other Republicans for not speaking out sooner against the president.

Representative Peter Meijer of Michigan said that Mr. Trump had betrayed his oath of office by seeking to undermine our constitutional process, and he bears responsibility for inciting the insurrection we suffered last week.

Representative Anthony Gonzalez of Ohio said Vice President Mike Pence and members of the House and Senate had their lives put in grave danger as a result of the presidents actions, adding, When I consider the full scope of events leading up to Jan. 6, including the presidents lack of response as the United States Capitol was under attack, I am compelled to support impeachment.

Representative David Valadao of California complained that the process had been rushed but said: Based on the facts before me, I have to go with my gut and vote my conscience. I voted to impeach President Trump. His inciting rhetoric was un-American, abhorrent and absolutely an impeachable offense. Its time to put country over politics.

Representative Tom Rice of South Carolina criticized Mr. Trumps response to the siege and concluded: I have backed this president through thick and thin for four years. I campaigned for him and voted for him twice. But this utter failure is inexcusable.

Four Republicans did not vote: Representatives Kay Granger of Texas, Andy Harris of Maryland, Greg Murphy of North Carolina and Daniel Webster of Florida.

Nicholas Fandos and Glenn Thrush contributed reporting.

See the original post here:
Which Republicans Voted to Impeach Trump? Here Are 10 - The New York Times

Screenshot from Republicans for the Rule of Law ad President Trump: Dont let history repeat itself Captured via YouTube

A new anti-Trump group helmed by Republicans announced Tuesday that it would raise $50 million to encourage lawmakers to break with President Donald Trump. Behind the project is Defending Democracy Together, one of the top-spending dark money groups in the 2020 election cycle.

The new effort the Republican Accountability Project promises to use its cash to ensure that ample resources are available for those principled Republicans who do the right thing and hold Trump accountable for inciting an attack on the U.S. Capitol.

The campaign joins another never-Trump Republican group, super PAC The Lincoln Project, in its efforts to sway Republican who might otherwise hesitate to break from the president in order to avoid alienating Trump voters in their home states and districts. The Republican Accountability Projects website offers scant detail about how lawmakers will be selected to benefit from the campaign, but promises to back credible primary challengers against Republican members of Congress who have enabled or capitulated to Trump and Trumpism.

The group promises Republicans who vote to impeach that it will provide them with political protection against primary challenges from Trump loyalists. The presidents campaign has raised $200 million since the election, which he could use against incumbent members of Congress who speak out against him.

Ten House Republicans voted to impeach Trump Wednesday, making the vote the most bipartisan impeachment in U.S. history. The resolution will now move to the Senate, where Democrats need to win over at least 17 Republicans in order to convict Trump. The impeachment trial is expected to begin next week following the inauguration of President-elect Joe Biden.

The Lincoln Project released an ad Wednesday urging members of Congress to vote to both impeach and convict Trump of inciting insurrection. The organization also aired an ad in California urging staff employed by House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) to quit en masse following Trump supporters Jan 6. attack on the Capitol.

The Lincoln Project receives millions of dollars from so-called dark money groups, 501(c)(4) nonprofits that are not required to disclose their funders. Defending Democracy Together is itself a 501(c)(4) organization that props up its affiliated super PACs with millions of dollars from undisclosed sources.

Both organizations are helmed by Republicans who broke from Trump at some point during his four-year term. Bill Kristol is the director of Defending Democracy Together and chairman of the board for the Republican Accountability Project. Kristol worked as an executive branch staffer during the administrations of both former Republican Presidents George H. W. Bush and Ronald Reagan.

Olivia Troye and Elizabeth Neumann, who both briefly worked in the Trump White House before breaking with the president in 2020, are co-directors of the project. Sarah Longwell, a Republican consultant and long-time Trump critic, is executive director of Defending Democracy Together and its newly-announced project.

Troye was a top aide to Vice President Mike Pence and advised the administration on its response to the COVID-19 pandemic before leaving in July, accusing Trump of grievously mishandling the federal governments response to the crisis. She appeared in several TV ads produced by Defending Democracy Together that aired before the election.

Despite the partisan affiliation of their leaders, the Lincoln Project and Defending Democracy Together are both funded largely by Democratic donors with deep pockets. In the run up to the 2020 election, The Lincoln Project took $1 million from Gordon Getty and hundreds of thousands of dollars from other billionaire Democrats including John Pritzker of Geolo Capital, Jonathan Lavine of Bain Capital and Dreamworks Founder David Geffen.

In 2020, Republican Voters Against Trump, a super PAC organized and funded by Defending Democracy Together, received $500,000 each from Pritzker and Michael Bloomberg, the former mayor of New York City who spent $152 million supporting Democratic candidates in the 2020 election cycle.Polls show that voters blame Trump for the Jan. 6 violence that left five dead. Some Republicans in Congress are taking the hint and denouncing Trump for his role in inciting the mob, but others have resisted linking the president to the violence.

Support Accountability Journalism

At OpenSecrets.org we offer in-depth, money-in-politics stories in the public interest. Whether youre reading about 2020 presidential fundraising, conflicts of interest or dark money influence, we produce this content with a small, but dedicated team. Every donation we receive from users like you goes directly into promoting high-quality data analysis and investigative journalism that you can trust. Please support our work and keep this resource free. Thank you.

Excerpt from:
Never-Trump 'dark money' group to spend millions backing Republicans who impeached Trump - Center for Responsive Politics

An anti-tax group funded primarily by billionaires has emerged as one of the biggest backers of the Republican lawmakers who sought to overturn the US election results, according to an analysis by the Guardian.

The Club for Growth has supported the campaigns of 42 of the rightwing Republicans senators and members of the House of Representatives who voted last week to challenge US election results, doling out an estimated $20m to directly and indirectly support their campaigns in 2018 and 2020, according to data compiled by the Center for Responsive Politics.

About 30 of the Republican hardliners received more than $100,000 in indirect and direct support from the group.

The Club for Growths biggest beneficiaries include Josh Hawley and Ted Cruz, the two Republican senators who led the effort to invalidate Joe Bidens electoral victory, and the newly elected far-right gun-rights activist Lauren Boebert, a QAnon conspiracy theorist. Boebert was criticised last week for tweeting about the House speaker Nancy Pelosis location during the attack on the Capitol, even after lawmakers were told not to do so by police.

Public records show the Club for Growths largest funders are the billionaire Richard Uihlein, the Republican co-founder of the Uline shipping supply company in Wisconsin, and Jeffrey Yass, the co-founder of Susquehanna International Group, an options trading group based in Philadelphia that also owns a sports betting company in Dublin.

While Uihlein and Yass have kept a lower profile than other billionaire donors such as Michael Bloomberg and the late Sheldon Adelson, their backing of the Club for Growth has helped to transform the organization from one traditionally known as an anti-regulatory and anti-tax pro-business pressure group to one that backs some of the most radical and anti-democratic Republican lawmakers in Congress.

Heres the thing about the hyper wealthy. They believe that their hyper-wealth grants them the ability to not be accountable. And that is not the case. If youve made billions of dollars, good on you. But that doesnt make you any less accountable for funding anti-democratic or authoritarian candidates and movements, said Reed Galen, a former Republican strategist who co-founded the Lincoln Project, the anti-Trump campaigners.

Galen said he believed groups such as the Club for Growth now served to cater to Republican donors own personal agenda, and not what used to be considered conservative principles.

The Lincoln Project has said it would devote resources to putting pressure not just on Hawley, which the group accused of committing sedition, but also on his donors.

The Club for Growth has so far escaped scrutiny for its role supporting the anti-democratic Republicans because it does not primarily make direct contributions to candidates. Instead, it uses its funds to make outside spending decisions, like attacking a candidates opponents.

In 2018, Club for Growth spent nearly $3m attacking the Democratic senator Claire McCaskill in Missouri, a race that was ultimately won by Hawley, the 41-year-old Yale law graduate with presidential ambitions who has amplified Donald Trumps baseless lies about election fraud.

That year, it also spent $1.2m to attack the Texas Democrat Beto ORourke, who challenged and then narrowly lost against Cruz.

Other legislators supported by Club for Growth include Matt Rosendale, who this week called for the resignation of fellow Republican Liz Cheney after she said she would support impeachment of the president, and Lance Gooden, who accused Pelosi of being just as responsible for last weeks riot as Trump.

Dozens of the Republicans supported by Club for Growth voted to challenge the election results even after insurrectionist stormed the Capitol, which led to five deaths, including the murder of a police officer.

The Club for Growth has changed markedly as the groups leadership has changed hands. The Republican senator Pat Toomey, who used to lead the group, has recently suggested he was open to considering voting for Trumps impeachment, and criticised colleagues for disputing election results. Its current head, David McIntosh, is a former Republican member of Congress who accompanied Trump on a final trip to Georgia last week, the night before Republican candidates David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler, both heavily supported by the Club for Growth, lost runoff elections to their Democratic opponents.

Neither the Club for Growth nor McIntosh responded to requests for comment.

Public records show that Richard Uihlein, whose family founded Schlitz beer, donated $27m to the Club for Growth in 2020, and $6.7m in 2018. Uihlein and his wife, Liz, have been called the most powerful conservative couple youve never heard of by the New York Times. Richard Uihlein, the New York Times said, was known for underwriting firebrand anti-establishment candidates like Roy Moore, who Uihlein supported in a Senate race even after it was alleged he had sexually abused underage girls. Moore denied the allegations.

A spokesman for the Uihleins declined to comment.

Yass of Susquehanna International, who is listed on public documents as having donated $20.7m to the Club for Growth in 2020 and $3.8m in 2018, also declined to comment. Yass is one of six founders of Susquehanna, called a crucial engine of the $5tn global exchange-traded fund market in a 2018 Bloomberg News profile. The company was grounded on the basis of the six founders mutual love of poker and the notion that training for probability-based decisions could be useful in trading markets. Susquehannas Dublin-based company, Nellie Analytics, wagers on sports.

In a 2020 conference on the business of sports betting, Yass said sports betting was a $250bn industry globally, but that with help from legislators, it could become a trillion-dollar industry.

A 2009 profile of Yass in Philadelphia magazine described how secrecy pervades Susquehanna, and that people who know the company say stealth is a word often used to describe its modus operandi. The article suggested Yass was largely silent about his company because he does not like to share what he does and how, and that those who know him believe he is very nervous about his own security.

Yass, who is described in some media accounts as a libertarian, also donated to the Protect America Pac, an organisation affiliated with Republican senator Rand Paul. The Pacs website falsely claims that Democrats stole the 2020 election.

See the original post:
Billionaires backed Republicans who sought to reverse US election results - The Guardian