“McConnell (R-Ky.) voted Tuesday against a procedural motion to proceed with Trump’s impeachment in the Senate, while McCarthy (R-Calif.) planned to meet with Trump in Florida on Thursday to mend relations that were frayed by the Jan. 6 attack, according to an adviser to the former president.
The efforts from the top serve to accommodate Trump’s most fervent supporters as they continue to champion the falsehood of widespread electoral fraud that motivated the attack on Jan. 6 and to seek retribution against the few Republicans who have called for accountability from Trump and the party’s conspiracy-minded elements.
McCarthy has rewarded with committee assignments new pro-Trump firebrands such as Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), a QAnon supporter who in the past appeared to espouse violence toward Democratic leaders. Other members of Congress, including Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.), have promised to inflict punishment on GOP colleagues who voted for Trump’s impeachment.
Marjorie Taylor Green (R-GA VIDEO:
For party leadership and top election strategists, video of protesters pummeling Capitol Police officers or chanting for the death of Vice President Mike Pence has proved less germane to current considerations than the potential to quickly return to power. They have been calling for more party comity, even with those holding extremist views…
Operating from Florida, Trump’s advisers have been encouraging party leaders to move on from impeachment and refrain from further criticism of the former president, even as they plot retribution against Republicans who opposed Trump’s final effort to overturn the election. Trump campaign advisers have commissioned and circulated to GOP lawmakers polling that shows him as still formidable in their states and made clear that he would seek revenge for votes against him.
‘We cannot take the House and the Senate back without his help. That’s just a fact,’ said Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.), who has called for prosecuting every person who illegally entered the U.S. Capitol but opposes impeachment…
McConnell and his allies are likely to focus less on whether Trump-backed parts of the party will rise in power in the coming elections than on whether Trump’s preferred candidates are viable in general election contests against Democrats. In the past, party leaders under McConnell’s direction have shown a willingness to intervene in primaries after a disastrous 2012 cycle when flawed Republican candidates identified with the tea party movement lost close Senate races in Missouri and Indiana.
But at the moment, the Republican concern over the coming Senate races remains muted. Party strategists are hopeful that candidates with broad appeal can win primaries in states such as Pennsylvania and Ohio, where there will be open elections because of the retirement of GOP incumbents. Speculation that the president’s daughter-in-law, Lara Trump, might run for the open North Carolina seat or that the president’s daughter Ivanka Trump might mount a primary challenge to Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) has yet to spark serious hand-wringing about Trump’s intentions…
Former Pennsylvania Republican congressman Ryan Costello is taking steps to run for Senate in 2022
Posted: January 8, 2021 - 4:50 PM Jonathan Tamari @JonathanTamari jtamari@inquirer.com
"A small and vocal minority of Republicans have continued to call for a reckoning over the extremist and anti-democratic currents that Trump has encouraged. Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah) said Tuesday in an address to the Economic Club of Chicago that Republicans must now make clear that Trump lost the election “fair and square.”
‘Five people died with the attack on the Capitol. Five human beings died,’ Romney said. ‘There is no question but that the president incited the insurrection that occurred.’
The Lincoln Project, a group of Republican and former Republican strategists that has pledged to stamp out Trumpism, also has continued to attack members of the party who support Trump, including McCarthy and McConnell.
‘This is a submission, a surrender to Trump’s coalition but most importantly to the anti-Americanness of that coalition,’ said Lincoln Project co-founder Steve Schmidt, a former aide to Vice President Richard B. Cheney and Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.). ‘They are foolish men who continue to believe they are riding the tiger as opposed to riding inside the tiger, which they have been doing for some time.”
Josh Dawsey
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