Senate Minority leader McConnell was open to convicting the guy who had made his life miserable for four years….
He kinda said so….
THAT is not gonna happen…
His fellow Senate GOPer’s took the temperature of Republicans back home a few weeks after the January 6 Capitol protest/assault….
While thousands of Republicans HAD walked away from the party?
Most STILL supported Trump…
Politician’s ARE about keeping their jobs….
45 of them voted against McConnell in supporting Rand Paul’s bull shit story that convicting Trump now, with him not being President is unconstitutional …
In that?
They have dragged McConnell along…..
This isn’t about Trump really…
This is about voters back home who came to believe what Donald Trump was selling which McConnell knew all along was bull shit, but went along…
A bit of payback, eh?
Three times in recent weeks, as Republicans grappled with a deadly attack on the Capitol and their new minority status in Washington, Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky carefully nudged open the door for his party to kick Donald J. Trump to the curb, only to find it slammed shut.
So his decision on Tuesday to join all but five Republican senatorsin voting to toss out the House’s impeachment case against Mr. Trump as unconstitutional seemed to be less a reversal than a recognition that the critical mass of his party was not ready to join him in cutting loose the former president. Far from repudiating Mr. Trump, as it appeared they might in the days after the Jan. 6 rampage at the Capitol, Republicans have reverted to the posture they adopted when he was in office — unwilling to cross a figure who continues to hold outsize sway in their party.
“Anybody surprised by that vote wasn’t paying attention before yesterday,” said Senator Roy Blunt of Missouri, a close ally of the Republican leader.
For Mr. McConnell, a leader who derives his power in large part from his ability to keep Republicans unified, defying the will of his members would have been a momentous risk, putting his own post in peril and courting the ire of the far right….
…
And then last week, in a speech on the Senate floor, Mr. McConnell flatly said the president had “provoked” the mob that sent the vice president and lawmakers fleeing as it violently stormed the Capitol, trying to stop Congress from formalizing his election loss.
They were striking moves for Mr. McConnell, who for four years consistently supported and enabled Mr. Trump, including backing his refusal to concede the election for more than a month after Joseph R. Biden Jr. was declared the winner. Mr. Trump spent that period spreading the false claims of voter fraud that fueled the Jan. 6 rampage.
But in the wake of the mob assault and a pair of Senate losses in Georgia, Mr. McConnell had come to view the former president as a dangerous political liability and saw an opening to marginalize Mr. Trump. He may have brought exceptionally energetic new voters into the Republican fold, Mr. McConnell and his advisers believed, but Mr. Trump’s excesses and personality had driven women and suburban voters away…
…
In the week since Mr. Trump skipped President Biden’s inauguration and decamped to his private club in Florida, it had become increasingly clear that his departure from the Oval Office had done little, if anything, to loosen his grip on rank-and-file Republicans in Congress…..
image….Credit…Oliver Contreras for The New York Times
Mitch McConnell
Forger all that bs he was mouthing off earlier(and the praise he received here as an example of the so called “civil war” in the Republican Party.
There is no “civil war.” There a few Republicans ( almost none in positions of importance or influence within the party) who remain anti Trump.So?
As far as I’m concerned?MCConnell is nothing more another Trump lackey who deserves nothing but contempt
Oh and as for the Republican Party?Still led by Donald J Trump,Domestic Terrorist.
I agree Jack, and why does our host think Trump made McConnell’s life miserable?
Moscow Mitch got everything he wanted, power, judges, and tax cuts. And his incompetent wife was made a Cabinet Secretary and, in turn, she gave him transportation projects.
Does that sound like a Republican nightmare?
Only when Trump sent a Republican mob after him did Mitch complain and only briefly.
House Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy ,a scant two weeks after holding Trump responsible for the insurrection, was down at Mar a Lago with the man he essentially labeled an accomplice of domestic terrorism,
All were smiles and a good time was had by all.
Ain’t life grand?
Maybe he meant “indigestion.”
But it’s not like Democrats in Congress have not visited or welcomed despots, past or present.
That’s a pretty weak “whataboutism.”
Since all Presidents of either party meet with despots occassionally,what’s that point?
However, if you can tell us about all the Democrats who have met with a former President of the United States two weeks after calling him a domestic terrorist?
I’m all ears!
I don’t recall a Republican President meeting with Castro or Chavez or Assad or Saddam Hussein, etc, let alone treating them like a rock star in the case of Fidel Castro.
And I am calling Trump a despot. I deserve the points for that at least.
So Trump didn’t meet with Kim, or Xi Jin-ping, or Putin, to praise them but to damn them ???
Trump’s foreign policy meets the things he touches end up being fuck ups…
I actually believe there is a major civil war in the Republican Party, but it is like a 15 percent sensible republican versus the 50 percent nuts and the 35 percent to scared to think for themselves so they listen to the louder nuts…the numbers games win and Trumpism is living on…McCarthy down there today sucking off the Orange ex-president…it’s only been a week and they are already stroking his balls…
4 or five senators will vote to convict him, that is like 10 percent minority I referenced above, McConnel falls into the 35% he knows better, but he can’t move against the mob he has used for so long to stay in power…when you play with fire you will get burnt and the Republicans have done it for far too long…
I would say that is the other big difference between Republicans and Democrats, the Democrats will try to appease the Liberal wing, but won’t go as far as the Republicans will with their rhetoric…THat’s what is crazy the Republicans don’t do shit that benefit their base just win points in the culture wars and talk their people up into lunacy…
I think it’s more like 15 brave, 50 scared, 35 nuts.
True Bdog….
I don’t think it rises to the level of a “civil war.”
As all seem to agree it’s something like 15% (if that) against 85% who are active Trumpists or ,due to cowardice or whatever ,at least acquiesce in the actions of the Trumpites
Those numbers need to change more toward 50/50.
Until then, it’s more like a”guerilla war “ with the Trumpists still firmly in control.
Yeah, at this point the Trumpists are busy silencing the Republicans who want to move on without Trump. And the fact that both the Senate minority leader and the House minority leader have backed off their recent criticism of Trump shows where this is going. As a result, I expect that there will be very little anti-Trump rhetoric in the GOP going forward, and the next GOP Presidential nominee will largely be chosen by Trump – whether he chooses himself or someone else. Trump just might be the most powerful leader in his party in recent history.
For at least the time being, Trump is the unambiguous leader of the GOP.
Yep. In the early part of 2021 the Republican party is clearly still Trump’s. Anyone who suggests otherwise is simply wishcasting.
Paul Gosar just said there’s a Civil War but in America at large, the shooting just hasn’t started.
Republicans and their guns.
But things are going back to regular order any day now, now that Trump is gone.
Civil War or Guerrilla War post coming in a few…
I don’t know why you guys think that 15% of the GOP. Is brave. I would say it is at most 10%, and falling.
Also you assume that the GOP is otherwise either scared or nuts. Perhaps some Republicans are both scared and nuts?
I won’t argue on numbers either way we all seem to be in agreement that it is a small minority versus a large majority…whatever the actual make up on the majority is I hope CG is actually right about his estimates, but I think he is wrong and my numbers are closer to being accurate
One might think that the Republicans of Massachusetts and Rhode Island would be anti-Trump, but from what I can gather, their bases (and thus, at least nominally, many of their leaders) are pr0-Trump. Probably don’t all buy into that dangerous wild-eyed craziness from the Heartland, but they still like Trump and no doubt think he’s been wronged in some way or another.
The Providence Republican City Committee split right down the middle when it came to electing a chair, so today it has two co-chairs (both of whom I know and get on with reasonably well): one a Trump enthusiast and the other a die-hard Never-Trumper.
See (for example), from this Monday’s Providence Journal:
Political Scene: Allegiance to Trump still strong among RI Republicans
Patrick Anderson, The Providence Journal 4 days ago
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/political-scene-allegiance-to-trump-still-strong-among-ri-republicans/ar-BB1d3hnb
DSD?
For ME?
It’s NOT really Trump
It’s anti-Democratic
Trump just is MORE out there about it…
The violence is against the ‘liberal’s’…
Against Blacks….
Against the government…
I think it’s more that for the base in a state that’s been de-industrializing for over 50 years and whose population hasn’t grown in decades.
¶ What are GOP leaders and voters in the Empire State thinking about the (forever I hope) and how does it break down between NYC, Long Island, the major upstate cities, the various suburbs and the countryside:?
Long Island lawmakers are quietly for Trump…
Same in NYC….
I live in Nassau….
2016 Trump took this county
Not this time….
We diD HAVE had a lot of pro-Trump rallies
Before election day….
that’s “… the (forever I hope) ex-President….”