In 2016, Donald Trump infamously said that he could shoot someone on 5th Avenue without losing the support of his fanatical followers. That still appears to be pretty much true as, after refusing to acknowledge the results of a free election, splitting his own party, presiding over the loss of the Senate, and instigating a deadly, violent assault on the Capitol in a bid to interfere with counting electoral votes, the latest CIVIQS results still show Trump holding onto 43% support.
In fact, if anyone has suffered from Trump’s actions it’s every other Republican official. It doesn’t even seem to matter to what degree they supported Trump in his efforts to topple the elected government. Kevin McCarthy? Way down. Mitch McConnell? Down to a hilarious 11% favorable rating. But the biggest loser may be Mike Pence, who has seen his support among Republicans plummet, putting him at a 33% favorable rating.
All of this can be explained simply enough: Republicans no longer think of themselves as Republicans. By a two to one margin, those who voted for Trump say they consider themselves “a Trump supporter,” not “a Republican.”
The way that these voters attach to Trump rather than anyone else can be seen in another value in the poll. When asked if they believed the election was “stolen,” a jaw-dropping 40% of Americans still said yes, over a week after the assault on the Capitol. But when asked if Republicans who voted against certifying the vote were “protecting democracy,” only 37% agreed. Even when Republicans were doing exactly what Trump asked them to do, they still got lower marks than Trump himself.
There was an interesting split on views of the actual insurgency. Asked if the Jan. 6 assault on the Capitol represented “a coup attempt,” 53% of Americans agreed—within a point of those in the poll who said they did not vote for Trump. However, when asked if the attack was “an act of terrorism,” the number rose to 60%. That number indicates that even some of those who voted for Trump were upset over the the sight of a mob prowling the halls of Congress. That number was apparently confirmed by the 62% who agreed that everyone who broke into the Capitol building should be arrested. And still, the guy who instigated the attack is polling far higher than other Republicans.
Finally, a plurality of voters want to see both Ted Cruz and Josh Hawley kicked out of the Senate. In Hawley’s case, that includes at least some voters who went for Trump.
Everything in the poll seems to indicate that Trump voters remain Trump voters, not Republican voters. If there remains a core of non-Trump Republicans, they are vanishingly small. As the GOP tries to separate itself from the angry guy leaving the room, it’s completely unclear how many of those Trump voters are ready to come back into their ranks without Big Orange at the lead. With a 11% favorable rating for McConnell, and a 20% rating for McCarthy … just who is the leader of the Republican Party going into 2021?
One possible side effect of this deep schism in the Republican Party is that it may make it easier for McConnell and other Republicans to support Trump’s impeachment. To coin a phrase: What do you have to lose?
Last week, Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY), who is the third-highest ranking House Republican, broke with her party last week when she was one of ten Republicans to vote with Democrats in impeaching President Donald Trump.
This has already come back to bite her, however, as she has just been censured by Wyoming Republicans for making this vote.
The House voted to impeach Trump for a second time by a vote of 232-197. Prior to the vote, Cheney released a scathing statement blaming Trump for the Capitol riots. She claimed that Trump “summoned” the rioters and then “lit the flame of this attack.”
“Everything that followed was his doing,” she added. “None of this would have happened without the president. The president could have immediately and forcefully intervened to stop the violence. He did not.”
This backfired on Cheney on Monday, when the Republican Party Central Committee in Carbon County, Wyoming voted unanimously to censure her for supporting impeachment.
“Representative Cheney has violated the trust of her voters, failed to faithfully represent a very large majority of motivated Wyoming voters, and neglected her duty to represent the party and the will of the people who elected her to represent them,” the censure resolution declared.
Related: If Republicans Put America First, They’ll Remove Liz Cheney, Not Donald Trump
“The Carbon County Republican Party does hereby censure U.S. Representative Liz Cheney of Wyoming for her actions on Wednesday, January 13th 2020, as those actions stand in contradiction to the quantifiable will of the majority of the electorate of Wyoming, and for devaluing the political influence of the State of Wyoming by voting in favor of a process that followed no known hearing process, provided no evidence to consider, called no witnesses to be sworn, and allowed none of the accusers to be questioned by the accused,” the resolution added.
Carbon County GOP Chairman Joey Correnti blasted Cheney to the Washington Times, saying that she has thus far refused to answer constituents angry over her vote.
“People in the county party have attempted to get a hold of Rep. Cheney through email, phone calls — and I think only one person got a response from a staffer and it was pretty short,” Correnti said. “We haven’t heard anything.”
The Wyoming Republican Party had already released a statement that slammed Cheney for voting in favor of impeachment.
“The wind in Wyoming has been horrendous today — with gusts up to 65 miles per hour,” the party said. “That is nothing compared to the whirlwind created by Representative Cheney’s announcement that she would be voting to impeach President Trump, and her subsequent follow-through of doing just that.”
“There has not been a time during our tenure when we have seen this type of an outcry from our fellow Republicans, with the anger and frustration being palpable in the comments we have received,” the statement added. “The consensus is clear that those who are reaching out to the Party vehemently disagree with Representative Cheney’s decision and actions.”
Pressure has been mounting for Cheney to resign, with House Freedom Caucus Chairman Andy Biggs (R-AZ) saying that she does not represent Republican ideals.
“The reality is, she’s not representing the conference, she’s not representing the Republican ideals,” Biggs told Fox News. “And I think that that’s a problem…I’m not alone in that sentiment.”
Read Next: Republicans Call For Liz Cheney To Resign Leadership Post After Calling For Trump’s Impeachment
This piece was written by James Samson on January 19, 2021. It originally appeared in LifeZette and is used by permission.
Read more at LifeZette:
Freshman GOP Rep Admits Voting To Impeach Trump May Have Destroyed His Career
Katie Couric Asks How We’ll ‘Deprogram People Who Signed Up For The Cult Of Trump?’
Rival Senate Trial Concepts Roil DC
The post Liz Cheney Voting To Impeach Trump Backfires On Her As She’s Censured By Wyoming Republicans appeared first on The Political Insider.
Senate GOP Leader Mitch McConnell, who just one year ago led the charge to acquit Donald Trump of impeachment charges, has been going through a head-spinning donor-inspired evolution over the last couple weeks since Trump incited violent insurrection at the U.S. Capitol.
After more than five weeks of silently endorsing Trump's efforts to overturn the election results, McConnell has moved from accepting President-elect Joe Biden's win to getting to "maybe" on convicting Trump to publicly blaming Trump for the murderous rioters who stormed the Capitol.
"The mob was fed lies," McConnell said from the Senate floor Tuesday, as he prepares to hand off the Senate majority to Democrats. "They were provoked by the president and other powerful people," McConnell added, conveniently failing to define "other people," since the vast majority of GOP congressional lawmakers helped fuel the fire of outrage among Trump supporters. Nonetheless, McConnell’s comments are still by the far the furthest he has gone in trying to disentangle himself and his caucus from Trump. Among GOP congressional leadership, only Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming, Republicans' No. 3 in the House, has gone further with her statement skewering Trump for lighting "the flame of the attack."
McConnell spent four solid years diligently avoiding leveling any direct criticism whatsoever at Trump, whether he was calling white supremacists "very fine people" or trying to steal a second election by extorting foreign officials. In fact, McConnell rallied his caucus to end the Senate trial last year without hearing from a single witness. In the process, McConnell and Senate Republicans taught Trump he would never suffer the consequences of his actions, no matter how abhorrent or harmful they were to American democracy.
But surprise, surprise—the mighty dollar is proving more powerful than opportunistic loyalty to a man now ending his term as the grossest, pettiest, and least liked American president in modern history. And Republican lawmakers are indeed facing a reckoning for building Trump into a monster and then fanning the flames of his bogus claims that the election was stolen from him. Not only are corporate donors pulling back from their widespread support of Sedition Party candidates, but other big-dollar donors are making their demands for a break with Trump perfectly clear. The New York Times reported over the weekend:
William E. Oberndorf, an influential Republican donor who gave $2.5 million to Mr. McConnell’s super PAC, the Senate Leadership Fund, in the 2020 election, said that donors should be closely watching the impeachment votes as they formulate their plans for giving. A longtime critic of Mr. Trump, Mr. Oberndorf said it had been a mistake for the party not to oust Mr. Trump during his first impeachment trial last year.
“They now have a chance to address this egregious mistake and make sure Donald Trump will never be able to run for public office again,” Mr. Oberndorf said. “Republican donors should be paying attention to how our elected officials vote on this matter.”
McConnell, who has never really liked Trump, may be legitimately angry over the violent mob Trump sicced on congressional lawmakers, Democrats and Republicans alike. But he's also sure gotten some monetary help in getting there. And given the choice between continuing to endear himself to Trump and securing the cash to help him win back the Senate majority? Sorry Trump, you lose.
In fact, McConnell doesn't even have the time to attend Trump's supposed celebratory send-off Wednesday morning at Andrews Air Force Base—he'll be attending Catholic mass with Joe Biden instead.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell on Tuesday said President Donald Trump “provoked” the rioters who stormed the Capitol earlier this month as Congress was certifying the presidential election results, his strongest condemnation yet of the outgoing president’s actions that led to the violent insurrection targeting lawmakers.
McConnell’s remarks come as the Senate is awaiting formal transmission of the House’s impeachment article passed last week, which charged Trump with “willful incitement of insurrection.” The Kentucky Republican, who will soon become the minority leader when Democrats take control of the chamber later this week, has not yet said whether he would vote to convict the president in the Senate’s upcoming trial, which will begin after President-elect Joe Biden is inaugurated and immediately once Pelosi sends the article across the Capitol.
“The mob was fed lies,” McConnell said on the Senate floor on the last full day of Trump’s presidency. “They were provoked by the president and other powerful people. And they tried to use fear and violence to stop a specific proceeding of the first branch of the federal government which they did not like. But we pressed on.”
The House impeached Trump last week in a bipartisan vote, with 10 Republicans joining all Democrats. After the House vote, McConnell signaled to his fellow Republicans that he is open to conviction, even as some GOP senators have questioned whether the Constitution allows the Senate to put a former president on trial.
Several Republicans have similarly critiqued the president’s rhetoric, in particular his speech the morning of the Jan. 6 riots in which he repeated his false claims of voter fraud and continued to insist, without evidence, that the election was “stolen” from him. Even many of the House Republicans who opposed impeaching Trump said his posture was “reckless,” and House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy said the president bears responsibility for the attack on the Capitol.
McConnell has done little to help the president or defend him in the wake of the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol. Last year, McConnell vigorously defended the president ahead of his first impeachment trial and declared that there was “no chance” that Trump would be removed from office. This time around, he is keeping an open mind, raising the possibility that the Senate could reach the two-thirds threshold required to convict the president and force a vote to bar him from holding federal office in the future.
Conviction in the Senate would require the support of all 50 Democrats plus at least 17 Republicans.
Even before the mob stormed the Capitol, McConnell was vigorously opposed to the Trump-backed efforts to object to the Electoral College certifications from a handful of swing states where Biden won. Ultimately, eight GOP senators and more than 130 House members objected to a slate of electors — even after the Capitol was violently desecrated. The objections went nowhere, though, and the House and Senate certified Biden’s victory.
“We stood together and said an angry mob would not get veto power over the rule of law in our nation, not even for one night,” McConnell added on Tuesday. “We certified the people’s choice for their 46th president.”
McConnell initially defended Trump’s right to challenge the election results in individual states, deferring to the president’s long-shot lawsuits. But those legal challenges eventually crumbled in court, prompting Republicans to acknowledge that Biden would indeed be sworn in on Jan. 20.
Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), the incoming majority leader, insisted that despite Pelosi’s delay, the Senate will soon hold an impeachment trial. He said Trump should be barred from ever holding office again.
Schumer and other top Democrats have sought to focus the opening days of their Senate majority on staffing Biden’s Cabinet and passing additional Covid-19 relief measures alongside holding an impeachment trial, though that could prove to be difficult given the all-encompassing nature of the trial process.
Senate leaders Chuck Schumer and Mitch McConnell have yet to strike an agreement on how to run an evenly split Senate. And McConnell is driving a hard bargain.
In a letter to colleagues, McConnell indicated he wants a commitment from Schumer (D-N.Y.) to preserve the legislative filibuster as part of their agreement governing the rules of the 50-50 Senate. He said while he is taking his cues from the last split Senate in 2001, he also believes "we need to also address the threats to the legislative filibuster."
"The time is ripe to address this issue head on before the passions of one particular issue or another arise," McConnell said. "A delay in reaching an agreement could delay the final determination of committee assignments but it is important to maintain the status quo on the legislative filibuster."
The two leaders met for about a half-hour on Tuesday in McConnell's office, during his last day as majority leader. There was no apparent resolution afterward; Schumer told reporters that "we discussed a whole lot of issues." Schumer declined to comment on the future of the legislative filibuster, but a spokesperson threw cold water on addressing it in an organizing resolution.
"Leader Schumer expressed that the fairest, most reasonable and easiest path forward is to adopt the 2001 bipartisan agreement without extraneous changes from either side," the spokesperson said. The spokesperson said that Schumer and McConnell had made progress on confirming Biden's nominees and holding a "fair impeachment trial" for outgoing President Donald Trump.
McConnell’s spokesman Doug Andres later Tuesday night said in a statement that “McConnell expressed his long-held view that the crucial, longstanding, and bipartisan Senate rules concerning the legislative filibuster remain intact, specifically during the power share for the next two years. Discussions on all aspects of the power-sharing agreement will continue over the next several days.”
It could be days before there's a resolution between Schumer and McConnell on how the Senate will operate. And a protracted standoff will result in a bizarre Senate stasis where it will take agreement of 100 senators to do much of anything, particularly confirming Biden's Cabinet.
Republicans will even still control majorities on some committees, since new senators haven't been added to those panels and the two leaders haven't hammered out committee ratios. All that could change with unanimous consent from senators, or an agreement from the two leaders.
In his letter to GOP colleagues, McConnell said he hoped the House would wait until at least Thursday to send the impeachment articles for Trump's Senate trial to allow the inauguration to take place on Wednesday without the trial clouding it. He also said his party will resume in-person party lunches next week. The letter was first reported by National Review.
Schumer will formally become majority leader on Wednesday afternoon, wielding an effective 51-50 majority after his new Democratic senators are sworn in and Kamala Harris becomes vice president and Senate tie-breaker, according to a source familiar with the schedule.
Schumer told reporters earlier on Tuesday that “we hope we can come to an agreement" with McConnell. McConnell is currently the majority leader and will still have major sway over incoming President Joe Biden’s agenda, particularly as long as the legislative filibuster is around.
“They’re both pragmatists in that they have to get this done for us to move forward. I think they will. I don’t get the sense McConnell is going to hold out for weeks or anything like that,” said Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.), who attends GOP leadership meetings with McConnell.
“Given what we’ve been through as a country: a pandemic, and an attempted coup, this relationship simply has to work,” added Sen. Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii), who helps run the party’s whip operation. “The normal political calculus about maximizing advantage in the next election has to be set aside.”
But the filibuster could be a big challenge. Schumer would be giving away much of his leverage early on if he bowed to McConnell's hopes of enshrining official protections for the supermajority requirement.
Currently most legislation requires 60 votes, meaning at least 10 Republicans would have to work with Democrats on most bills. If Democrats grow frustrated with a McConnell-led blockade, Schumer could in theory get all his members to get rid of that rule with a vice presidential tie-break.
Some Democrats have said they will not vote to change the rules, though Republicans may want an ironclad commitment. Democrats would view any agreement on preserving the filibuster as a departure from past precedent of operating an evenly split Senate.
Schumer (D-N.Y.) and McConnell (R-Ky.) are largely expected to run the Senate in a similar fashion to how former Senate leaders Trent Lott and Tom Daschle devised the last 50-50 blueprint in 2001. That allowed for committee memberships to be evenly split, with bills that receive tied votes advancing to the floor; the party controlling the White House would still set the Senate schedule and determine which legislation would get taken up.
But there’s so much to be negotiated this time around beyond just the operations of the Senate. Among the unanswered questions: When will President Donald Trump’s impeachment trial start and how long will it go?
Speaker Nancy Pelosi and other top Democrats have been tight lipped about planning for the trial, including when they plan to transit the impeachment article to the Senate. Democratic aides have said they don’t expect an announcement until Thursday at the earliest, not wanting to distract from the inauguration on Wednesday. Democrats also said trial timing is determined more by the power sharing agreement Schumer and McConnell reach than when the House transmits the article.
It's also unclear whether Biden gets any of his Cabinet nominees confirmed before or during the trial, though Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) said he will prevent Biden's Homeland Security chief from being confirmed on Wednesday. And Democrats are also eager to learn whether Republicans will work with them on a Covid-19 relief package before they decide to move unilaterally.
“Obviously there’s a lot of suspicion and doubt on our side given the history of McConnell in the minority under the Obama administration. A lot of reasons for skepticism and cynicism,” said Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.). “It should be a reset moment for all of us. Not just Schumer and McConnell.”
Rank-and-file senators were largely in the dark on how close — or far — the two leaders are from cutting a deal on all those critical items. Schumer said bluntly: “We’ve got three things we’ve got to do quickly, impeachment, nomination, Covid.”
In a Senate speech on Tuesday afternoon, McConnell said the "marching orders from the American people are clear. We're to have a robust discussion and seek common ground."
And senators are eager to see how that all shakes out at a historic time, with an outgoing president’s impeachment trial set to start amid a devastating pandemic and an evenly divided upper chamber.
“It’s gonna be interesting. We’ll just have to wait and see. People are excited about getting going,” said Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.), who was among the eight Republicans who objected to certification of Biden’s Electoral College win in two states hours after the pro-Trump riot. “Everybody’s kind of excited about putting it all behind us and going forward.”
Heather Caygle and Marianne LeVine contributed to this report.