"A house divided against itself cannot stand," Abraham Lincoln declared in 1858, just two years before he assumed the mantle of the recently formed Republican Party. "It will become all one thing or all the other." |
A century and a half later, in the wake of a presidency driven by personality politics that ended with a violent assault on the Capitol building, the G.O.P.'s House conference is deeply divided against itself. The question is what it will become. |
A group of traditionalist Republican figures — virtually none of whom currently hold elected office — are threatening to ditch the party and start a new one, saying that the G.O.P. is on the verge of becoming "all one thing": a cult of personality. |
But some insiders say that the threat is mostly hollow, given how staunchly pro-Donald Trump the Republican base now is, and how unfriendly to third parties the American political system has always been. |
"A third party isn't going to happen," Sarah Chamberlain, the director of the pro-business Republican Main Street Partnership and a longtime Trump critic, said in an interview. "But stay within the party, and it changes. Elect people that are more to your liking." |
Doing that may be tough. On Wednesday, Republican lawmakers in the House booted Representative Liz Cheney from her leadership post because she wouldn't stop calling out Trump for promoting the false narrative that the 2020 election was stolen from him. |
A day later, a group of more than 100 anti-Trump Republicans pushed back on Cheney's behalf, releasing a letter — titled "A Call for American Renewal" — warning that they might decamp to a new party if the G.O.P. didn't reject Trump's lies and, as they put it, "rededicate itself to founding ideals." |
But today, House Republicans made clear just how unimpressed they were by the threat: They voted to replace Cheney with Representative Elise Stefanik, a moderate from upstate New York who recently threw in with Trump's baseless claims about election fraud. |
It's maybe the clearest reminder yet that conservative ideology matters less to the Republican base these days than does loyalty to Trump's narrative. It's possible to be a center-right legislator and still be welcomed into the party. The price of entry is fealty to Trump. |
Barbara Comstock, a former Republican member of Congress from Virginia who signed on to the letter, said that for many, that's a bridge too far. "There's a lot of Republicans out there who say, 'I don't have a party anymore,'" she said. "And we're trying to let people know there's a lot of us — just rank-and-file people out there that don't want to be Democrats, that want to support center-right policies, but they can't go to Trump." |
Comstock and her allies see a ray of hope in a proposed bipartisan commission to investigate the Capitol attack on Jan. 6, and lawmakers today took a major step toward getting it off the ground. Representative John Katko, the ranking Republican on the Homeland Security Committee, agreed to drop his party's demand that the commission look into left-wing violence at racial justice protests as part of its investigation, a move that Comstock hailed as a sign of progress. |
By establishing clearly what role Trump and his allies on Capitol Hill played in enabling the attack, she said, the commission could make it harder for Republicans to continue supporting "the big lie" that Trump is the victim of a vote-stealing conspiracy. |
"That will be very important, to get this very much out in the open," Comstock said. |
Still, conservative media — the apparatus that has most consistently aided and abetted Trump's distortions — has shown less and less interest in condemning the rioters as Jan. 6 has receded in the rearview mirror. And at least for now, Republican voters remain mostly supportive of the former president. |
In a CNN poll from March, Republicans said by a 2-to-1 margin that they approved of how Trump had handled the events of Jan. 6. |
But does that really mean a disaffected minority of Republicans will start a third party? For now, Comstock acknowledged, that remains a threat more than a realistic possibility. |
"I'm focused on finding good Republicans — like John Katko, like Liz Cheney, like Adam Kinzinger — who will run for next cycle," she said. "Reject that big lie and put together a coalition." |
And as Chamberlain pointed out, although the House Republican Conference is now led entirely by a pro-Trump team, many of the top G.O.P. lawmakers on House committees have quietly resisted his takeover of the party. |
"If we get back the majority, we have a lot of our members leading committees," Chamberlain said, referring to House lawmakers who belong to the Republican Main Street Partnership and have no love lost for Trump. |
This, of course, could spell only more dissension and division ahead of the 2024 presidential election, when the party's voters will have to decide whether to nominate a Trumpist candidate — maybe even the former president himself — or a more traditional Republican figure. For now, the house remains divided. |
What's beneath Biden's folksy demeanor? |
By Michael D. Shear, Katie Rogers and Annie Karni |
Quick decision-making is not President Biden's style. His reputation as a plain-speaking politician hides a more complicated truth. Before making up his mind, the president demands hours of detail-laden debate from scores of policy experts, taking everyone around him on what some in the West Wing refer to as his Socratic "journey" before arriving at a conclusion. |
Those trips are often difficult for his advisers, who are peppered with sometimes obscure questions. Avoiding Biden's ire during one of his decision-making seminars means not only going beyond the vague talking points that he will reject, but also steering clear of responses laced with acronyms or too much policy minutiae, which will prompt an outburst of frustration, often laced with profanity. |
Let's talk plain English here, he will often snap. |
Interviews with more than two dozen current and former Biden associates provide an early look into how Biden operates as president — how he deliberates, whom he consults for advice and what drives his decisions as he settles into the office he has chased for more than three decades. |
What emerges is a portrait of a president with a short fuse, who is obsessed with getting the details right — sometimes to a fault, including when he angered allies and adversaries alike by repeatedly delaying a decision on whether to allow more refugees into the United States. |
On policy issues, Biden, 78, takes days or weeks to make up his mind as he examines and second-guesses himself and others. It is a method of governing that can feel at odds with the urgency of a country still reeling from a pandemic and an economy struggling to recover. The president is also faced with a slim majority in Congress that could evaporate next year, giving him only months to enact a lasting legacy. |
Those closest to him say Biden is unwilling, or unable, to skip the routine. As a longtime adviser put it, he needs time to process the material so that he feels comfortable selling it to the public. But the approach has its risks, as President Barack Obama found out when his own, sometimes lengthy policy debates led to infighting and extended lobbying, and made his White House feel process driven. |
Biden could fall victim to the same fate, though he has far more experience governing than Obama did in 2009. So far, the Biden administration has moved quickly to confront the nation's challenges even as Biden's own deliberations can linger, often prompting calls as late as 10:30 or 11 p.m. as he gets ready for the next morning. |
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