Mediaboss Marketing

Six months after seizing complete control of the federal government, the Republican Party stands divided as ever plunged into a messy war among its factions that has escalated in recent weeks to crisis levels.

Frustrated lawmakers are increasingly sounding off at a White House awash in turmoil and struggling to accomplish its legislative agenda. President Donald Trump is scolding Republican senators over health care and even threatening electoral retribution. Congressional leaders are losing the confidence of their rank-and-file. And some major GOP donors are considering using their wealth to try to force out recalcitrant incumbents.

"It's a lot of tribes within one party, with many agendas, trying to do what they want to do," Rep. Tom MacArthur, R-N.J., said in an interview.

The intensifying fights threaten to derail efforts to overhaul the nation's tax laws and other major initiatives that GOP leaders hope will put them back on track. The party is still bogged down by a monthslong health-care endeavor that still lacks the support to become law, even as Senate GOP leaders plan to vote on it this week.

With his agenda stalled and Trump consumed by staff changes and investigations into Russian interference to help win election, Republicans are adding fuel to a political fire that is showing no signs of burning out. The conflict also heralds a potentially messy 2018 midterm campaign with fierce intraparty clashes that could draw resources away from fending off Democrats.

Winning control of both chambers and the White House has done little to fill in the deep and politically damaging ideological fault lines that plagued the GOP during Barack Obama's presidency and ripped the party apart during the 2016 presidential primary. Now, Republicans have even more to lose.

"In the 50 years I've been involved, Republicans have yet to figure out how to support each other," said R. Emmett Tyrrell Jr., the founder of the American Spectator, a conservative magazine.

On Capitol Hill, many Republicans are increasingly concerned that Trump has shown no signs of being able to calm the party. What Rep. Charlie Dent, R-Pa., called the "daily drama" at the White House flared again last week when Trump shook up his communications staff and told the New York Times that he regretted picking Jeff Sessions to be his attorney general.

"This week was supposed to be 'Made in America Week' and we were talking about Attorney General Jeff Sessions," Dent grumbled in a phone interview Thursday, citing White House messaging efforts that were overshadowed by the controversies.

As Trump dealt with continued conflicts among his staff which culminated Friday in press secretary Sean Spicer resigning in protest after wealthy financier Anthony Scaramucci was named communications director he set out to try to resolve the Senate Republican impasse over health care.

Chip Somodevilla / Getty Images

The president had a small group of Republican senators over for dinner last Monday night to talk about the issue. But the discussion veered to other subjects, including Trump's trip to Paris and the Senate's 60-vote threshold for most legislation, which Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., has said he will not end. That didn't stop Trump from wondering aloud about its usefulness.

"He asked the question, 'why should we keep it?'" recalled Sen. James Lankford. R-Okla., who attended the dinner.

Two days later, some Republican senators left a White House lunch confused about what Trump was asking them to do on health care. Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, said the next day that while the president "made very clear" that "he wants to see a bill pass, I'm unclear, having heard the president and read his tweets, exactly which bill he wants to pass."

The White House says the president prefers to "repeal and replace" the Affordable Care Act, known as Obamacare. McConnell has also raised the prospect of moving to only repeal the law. Neither option has enough votes. Nevertheless, McConnell plans to hold a vote early this week and bring the push to fulfill a seven-year campaign promise to its conclusion, one way or the other.

"One of the things that united our party has been the pledge to repeal Obamacare since the 2010 election cycle," said White House legislative affairs director Marc Short. "So when we complete that, I think that will help to unite" the party.

Trump's allies on Capitol Hill have described the dynamic between the White House and GOP lawmakers as a "disconnect" between Republicans who are still finding it difficult to accept that he is the leader of the party that they have long controlled.

"The disconnect is between a president who was elected from outside the Washington bubble and people in Congress who are of the Washington bubble," said Sen. David Perdue, R-Ga., who works closely with the White House. "I don't think some people in the Senate understand the mandate that Donald Trump's election represented."

Trump issued a threat at the Wednesday lunch against Sen. Dean Heller, R-Nev., who has not embraced McConnell's health-care bill. "Look, he wants to remain a senator, doesn't he?" Trump said in front of a pack of reporters as Heller, sitting directly to his right, grinned through the uncomfortable moment.

Heller is up for re-election in a state that Trump lost to Hillary Clinton and where Gov. Brian Sandovalwas the first Republican to expand Medicaid under the ACA. He later brushed the moment off as "President Trump being President Trump."

But some donors say they are weighing whether to financially back primary challengers against Republican lawmakers unwilling to support Trump's agenda.

"Absolutely we should be thinking about that," said Frank VanderSloot, a billionaire chief executive of an Idaho nutritional-supplement company. He bemoaned the "lack of courage" some lawmakers have shown and wished representatives would "have the guts" to vote the way they said they would on the campaign trail.

It's not just the gulf between Trump and Republican senators that has strained relations during the health-care debate. The way McConnell and his top deputies have handled the effort has drawn sharp criticism from some GOP senators.

"No," said Sen. Pat Roberts, R-Kan., when asked last week whether he was happy with the way leadership has navigated the talks.

As he stepped into a Senate office building elevator the same day, Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, would not respond to reporter questions about how good a job McConnell has done managing the health-care push. He flashed a smile as the door closed.

McConnell has defended his strategy, saying the process has been open to Republican senators, who have discussed it in many lunches and smaller meetings. Still, when it came time to write the bill, it was only McConnell and a small group of aides who did it. There was no outreach at all to Democrats, who have been united in their opposition.

In the House, the prospect of passing a 2018 budget this summer and a spending bill with funding for the Mexican border wall that Trump has called for remain uncertain, even though Republicans have a sizeable majority in the chamber. GOP disagreements have continued to flare during Speaker Paul D. Ryan's, R-Wis., tenure. There are also challenges in both chambers to achieving tax reform, which is expected to be among the next major GOP legislative undertakings.

Trump critics said the ongoing controversies over Russian interference in the 2016 election and probes into potential coordination with the president's associates would make any improvement in relations all but impossible in the coming months, with many Republicans unsure whether Trump's presidency will survive.

"The Russia stories never stop coming," said Rick Wilson, a vocal anti-Trump consultant and GOP operative. "For Republicans, the stories never get better, either. There is no moment of clarity or admission."

Wilson said Republicans are also starting to doubt whether "the bargain they made that they can endure Trump in order to pass X or Y" can hold. "After a while, nothing really works and it becomes a train wreck."

Roger Stone, a longtime Trump associate, said Trump's battles with Republicans are unlikely to end and are entirely predictable, based on what Trump's victory signified.

"His nomination and election were a hostile takeover of the vehicle of the Republican Party," Stone said. He added, "When you talk to some Republicans who oppose Trump, they say they will keep opposing him but can't openly say it."

Many Republican lawmakers have struggled to talk about the president publicly, fearful of aggressively challenging their party leader but also wary of aligning too closely with some of his controversial statements or policy positions. Instead, they often attempt to focus on areas where they agree.

"On foreign policy, I think he very much is involved in a direction that's far more in alignment since he's been elected with a bulk of the United States Senate than during the campaign," said Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Bob Corker, R-Tenn.

Amid the discord, there are some signs of collaboration. The Republican National Committee has worked to build ties to Trump and his family. In recent weeks, Trump's son Eric, his wife, Lara, and RNC chair Ronna Romney McDaniel, among other RNC officials, met at the Trump International Hotel in Washington to discuss upcoming races and strategy.

That meeting followed a similar gathering weeks earlier at the RNC where Trump family members were welcomed to share their suggestions, according two people familiar with the sessions who were not authorized to speak publicly.

Nevertheless, the friction is building. Even among Trump's defenders, like VanderSloot, who said the president is "trying to move the ball forward," there are concerns he is picking too many fights with too many people. "I think he's trying to swat too many flies," VanderSloot said.

The broader challenge, some Republicans say, is to overcome a dynamic of disunity in the party that predates Trump and the current Congress. During the Obama years, it took the form of tea party-versus-establishment struggles, which in some cases cost Republicans seats or led them to wage risky political fights.

"There was a separation between Republicanism and conservatism long before he won the White House," said former Republican National Committee chairman Michael Steele. "The glue has been coming apart since Reagan."

Kelsey Snell contributed to this report.

See the original post here:
Republicans are in full control of government but losing control of their party - Chicago Tribune