Grand Ol’ Prospects: Republicans abandoning Trump lick their wounds and plan their future

Primaried. A verb. To target an incumbent within one’s own political party, as in what the president’s son threatened to do to every Republican lawmaker who failed to challenge last week’s Electoral College vote.

“I will personally work to defeat every single Republican Senator / Congressman who doesn’t stand up against this fraud,” Eric Trump tweeted ahead of one of the darkest days in American history. “They will be primaried in their next election and they will lose.”

Not so much now, where such threats ring hollow as the Grand Old Party tries to reconfigure its future without its one-term demagogue.

For four years, President Trump used his rabid conservative populist following to intimidate even the most traditional Republicans. Now, after a crushing November election defeat and the public scorn ignited when his backers stormed the U.S. Capitol, the future of the Trump-led GOP teeters uneasily between self-destruction and reconstruction.

“I want him to resign. I want him out,” Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska told The Anchorage Daily News. “He has caused enough damage.”

But is the damage done? The post-Trump Republicans remain the party of QAnon, home to wild conspiracy theories — like a worldwide “Deep State” confederation of satanic pedophile “elites” who shoulder the blame for the world’s ills.

Marjorie Taylor Greene, a supporter of the baseless beliefs, won a House seat in Georgia — as did QAnon believer Lauren Boebert in Colorado.

Yet for some Republicans, Trump’s iron grip on the party, after his election beatdown and a global pandemic responsible for more than 350,000 U.S. deaths, was irredeemably weakened by Wednesday’s nationally-televised Capitol rioting. They are already trying to shift the GOP from a party bullied by a megalomaniac to a once-proud faction seeking to restore itself from the ashes.

What was once unspeakable, even just weeks ago, is now sung in unison by some party members. The fear of a vindictive president and his at-the-ready base is beginning to dissipate. The Republican sun is shining. The GOP is smiling again.

“You’ll see other people who don’t want to wait in line anymore,” said Peter Feinman, president of the Institute of History, Archaeology, and Education. “Chris Christie might want to run. You have people who want to promote their own future and not roll over and play dead for him.”

Christie, the former New Jersey governor, who ran for president in 2016, was among the chorus of Trump supporters who disavowed the president after the Capitol chaos.

Christie blamed the sore loser for the senate runoff losses in Georgia, defeats that cost the GOP control of the U.S. Senate. Democrats Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock defeated the Republican candidates, Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue.

But the optimistic Christie said the battered party can even rebound from that.

“In the end I think our leadership is going to come from those people who want to put themselves forward and are willing to take the risk that goes along with putting your name on the ballot and putting your ideas out there,” Christie told Bloomberg Radio. “I still think our ideas are the better ideas. I still think we’re a right-of-center country.”

Christie said the next two years of a Biden administration and a Democratic congress will only bear that out.

“If we can conduct ourselves appropriately, I think we’ll be in good shape in 2022 to regain the House,” Christie said.

By then, experts agreed, Trump’s hold on the party will have loosened. Feinman said the fear will have lifted, and the party will have its first real test in a post-Trump America.

Feinman, who writes a political blog, reminded voters that all politics is local, and said Trump’s influence didn’t always trickle down to the local level.

“Look what happened in Georgia,” Feinman said, recounting Trump’s attempt to overturn votes there. “The secretary of state stood up for the law instead of the party.”

When the new year began, Trump still reigned as the most dominant force in Republican politics. He was poised to be a kingmaker in 2024, or even rise from the ashes and seek the crown again himself.

Six days later, after his unhinged supporters stormed the Capitol in an assault that left five dead, there was talk of a second impeachment along with calls for Trump to step down or be removed with just days left in his term.

“At this point, I won’t defend him anymore,” said Ari Fleischer, a former White House press secretary for George W. Bush and a GOP strategist who voted for Trump. “I won’t defend him for stirring the pot that incited the mob. He’s on his own.”

The narrative within the GOP is that Republicans knew all along what they were getting in Trump, Feinman said.

“As long as he didn’t blow up anything they said we could get through this,” Feinman said. “I think the Capitol was the final straw.”

Sarah Longwell, a Republican political strategist, abandoned the president a long time ago. She was so disappointed in Trump’s leadership that she started the group Republican Voters Against Trump to stand up to the schoolyard bully.

“Republicans are afraid not just of the mean tweet but of the voters who are more loyal to Trump than to the party,” Longwell said. “So many Republicans are now walking away from him. You can see this massive rift is breaking open.”

Longwell said the Georgia losses could actually be good for the GOP.

“Losing the Senate gives Republicans reason to do some soul searching,” Longwell said. “Donald Trump is no longer going to be in power. That’s really going to change things. They have to figure out a way to stitch together Trump’s base and traditional GOP voters. That’s not an easy thing.”

Former U.S. Sen. Jeff Flake (R.-Arizona) agreed.

“Today was an awful day,” Flake tweeted after the Capitol assault. “But tomorrow will be better. And on January 20th we will inaugurate a new President. Our best days are ahead.”