Only time will tell if what the Republican Party is experiencing is a change towards radicalism and populism that is difficult to reverse, a process of fragmentation with the risk of total rupture, or both at the same time. In any case, Donald Trump's growing problems with the law due to the coup in the Capitol, for his attempts to falsify the presidential elections and for his appropriation of the top secret documents that he took to his home in Florida and the FBI seized last week under accusations of serious crimes have exacerbated the extremism of those most loyal to the leader and revived the internal conflict within the party. A conflict that was staged last night with all drama in the Wyoming primaries between the ousted Republican of stale ancestry that is Liz Cheney, also vice president of the committee on the assault on the Capitol and the former president's biggest hammer, and the staunch supporter of Trump that is Harriet Hageman.
The polls gave Hageman a comfortable victory in the state that 70% voted for the former governor in the 2020 presidential elections. The confirmation of the defeat and the consequent loss of the seat in the House of Representatives after the mid-term elections on 8 November could, however and paradoxically, mean the restart of the political career of the daughter of former Vice President Dick Cheney; a difficult clean slate through a candidacy for the 2024 presidential elections, analysts say, under the promise of recovering the true essence of American republicanism.
Yesterday's session was completed with the primaries for Alaska's only seat in the Lower House, with the participation of former governor and promoter of the Tea Party Sarah Palin, supported by Trump and whose result may take days to be known by the state's complex electoral system. .
Proof of the tension that exists within the Grand Old Party or GOP -the other name of the party- is the fact that Cheney gave up campaigning in the streets of Wyoming for fear of seeing some of the continuous threats carried out, many of them death, which she has been receiving from the trumpists since she declared war on the leader and voted in favor of his removal or impeachment for the coup of January 6, 2021. Of the total of ten Republican congressmen who voted in this way, four ended up withdrawing from the race to stay in office, two lost before Cheney, and only two won.
Neither the overwhelming testimonies and evidence accumulated by the investigating committee of the assault on the Capitol in the sense that it was Trump who instigated it and wanted to direct it in person; neither the demonstration that his claim of electoral fraud is a hoax, nor the investigation against him for taking home documents compromising the security of the nation have weakened support for his leadership among the grassroots.
A Pew Research Center poll published on August 9 indicates that almost six in ten Republicans strongly identified with the party (59%) defend leaders who claim (falsely) that Trump won the 2020 presidential election: a figure consistent with a similar or even higher proportion, in numerous and persistent surveys, of Republicans who support this thesis of fraud.
But support for the current leader has its ups and downs. To begin with, and again according to repeated polls, half of Republicans do not want Trump to run for re-election in 2024. And the Republicans directly opposed to him are not sitting idly by. The group that brings together many of them in the Republican Accountability Project has just invested three million dollars in a campaign against the candidates for the November elections who support the falsehoods of the former president. The campaign includes images of supporters of the leader beating Capitol police on 6-E.
At the same time, a minority but increasingly vocal sector of GOP leaders warns against personalism and radical calls that, like those seeking to "defund the FBI," erode the organization's image as a party of law and order. while distracting him from the battle of ideas and proposals against the Democrats.
If the risk of confrontation between Americans is served, as the authors of not a few books on an upcoming civil war in the country say, no less served is a dispute or internal cleansing within the veteran formation of Abraham Lincoln.
"The Republican Party is very sick and it will take a lot to cure it... if it can be done at all." Word of Liz Cheney, perhaps the GOP congresswoman who least fits into the party today, but whose Republican lineage no one doubts.
