The Memo: GOP at crossroads over Trump

The Republican Party, which had hoped to be flying high following last week’s midterm elections, is instead in a state of flux — with former President Trump at the core of the unease. 

Trump launched his third bid for the presidency in a meandering speech at Mar-a-Lago on Tuesday evening. 

But Trump’s campaign launch came at a moment of political and legal vulnerability for the former president. 

Many fingers are pointed at him for the GOP’s disappointing performance in the midterms. There is also wide speculation that he has chosen to begin his campaign so early to make it easier to cast any coming criminal indictments as politically motivated. 

Trump is in legal peril over the handling of sensitive information recovered in an FBI raid on Mar-a-Lago; efforts by him and his allies to overturn the 2020 election results in Georgia; and his role in inciting the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot. 

Trump and Trumpism are vexing the GOP on Capitol Hill as well. 

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) is trying to manage the restive pro-Trump faction of his party as he seeks to become Speaker in January. 

McCarthy easily put down a challenge from Rep. Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.) on Tuesday to become the GOP’s nominee for the position. 

But 31 House Republicans voted for Biggs, underscoring McCarthy’s challenges in getting support from an outright majority in the House when the crunch vote comes. 

Even though Trump endorsed McCarthy, some of the former president’s most fervent allies in the House — such as Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) — are among McCarthy’s fiercest critics. 

Meanwhile, the Senate GOP was roiled this week by the first challenge to Sen. Mitch McConnell’s (R-Ky.) leadership in the 15 years he has headed the conference. 

McConnell batted back the attempt to oust him by Sen Rick Scott (R-Fla.) with relative ease on Wednesday, winning the vote 37-10 with one senator voting present. 

But Scott’s decision to challenge McConnell in the first place was seen as evidence of dissent and dismay in GOP ranks after they failed to capture the majority last week.

The Senate leadership election was held behind closed doors, but several of the most pro-Trump senators backed Scott. The Floridian was nominated by Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), while Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) cast one of the votes in his favor.

Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.), whose clinched-fist salute to protesters at the Capitol before violence broke out on Jan. 6 caused uproar, also said well in advance of the vote that he would not back McConnell. 

CNN’s Manu Raju tweeted that Hawley told him on Tuesday that McConnell could not lead the GOP back to the majority in the Senate. 

“If you want to be a majority party, clearly what we’re doing isn’t working,” Hawley said. “It hasn’t been working for a long time. And I think you look at independent voters … we gave them nothing.” 

Comments like that are evidence that the GOP, which thought it had a clear lane to sweeping electoral success, instead finds itself abruptly at a crossroads. 

Figures like Hawley appear to want the party to conform to a Trump template — populist, protectionist and combative. 

But others, like McConnell, clearly believe the party has embraced the former president much too tightly — to its electoral detriment. 

McConnell on Tuesday told reporters that it was “pretty obvious” what had befallen the party in the midterms.  

“We underperformed among independents and moderates because their impression of many of the people in our party in leadership roles is that they’re involved in chaos, negativity, excessive attacks, and it frightened independent and moderate Republican voters,” he said. 

That seemed a clear shot at Trump. So did McConnell’s reprising of his earlier worries about “candidate quality,” a phrase seen as a jab at prominent Trump endorsees such as Mehmet Oz and Herschel Walker. 

Oz, crucially, lost the Pennsylvania Senate seat previously held by Republican Pat Toomey. Walker trailed Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock in the initial vote in Georgia. The Georgia race now moves to a Dec. 6 runoff. 

To the relief of many Republicans, Trump did at least urge voters during his campaign launch to turn out to back Walker next month. 

There is one further wrinkle to the GOP’s grappling with Trump: the role of conservative media. 

The stance of outlets in Rupert Murdoch’s stable is a particular subject of fascination across the political spectrum. 

The New York Post, which had run a front page mocking Trump as “Trumpty Dumpty” in the immediate wake of the midterms, relegated news of his campaign launch to page 26 of its print edition on Wednesday. Later that day, the lead story on the Post’s website outlined GOP donor concerns about Trump under the headline, “Done with Don.” 

A Wall Street Journal editorial, first published on Monday evening, lamented Trump’s determination to mount another White House bid.  

“The GOP, and the country, would be best served if Mr. Trump ceded the field to the next generation of Republican leaders to compete for the nomination in 2024,” the Journal’s editors wrote. “If Mr. Trump insists on running, then Republican voters will have to decide if they want to nominate the man most likely to produce a GOP loss and total power for the progressive left.” 

One thing’s for sure: With Trump beginning his third campaign, seven years after he first launched on the road to the White House, the war over his influence on Republican politics is entering a new phase. 

The Memo is a reported column by Niall Stanage.