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Trump's failed GOP: Party further tightens tie to former president

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>https://thehill.com/homenews/wire/593004-trumps-gop-party-further-
>tightens-tie-to-former-president
>
>SALT LAKE CITY (AP) — In 2016, Donald Trump overtook the Republican 
>National Committee through a shock and awe campaign that stunned party 
>leaders. In 2020, the party was obligated to support him as the sitting 
>Republican president.
>
>Heading into 2024, however, the Republican Party has a choice.
>
>The RNC, which controls the party’s rules and infrastructure, is under no
>obligation to support Trump again. In fact, the GOP’s bylaws specifically
>require neutrality should more than one candidate seek the party’s 
>presidential nomination.
>
>But as Republican officials from across the country gathered in Utah this
>week for the RNC’s winter meeting, party leaders devoted considerable 
>energy to disciplining Trump’s rivals and embracing his grievances. As
>the earliest stages of the next presidential contest take shape, their
>actions made clear that choosing to serve Trump and his political
>interests remains a focus for the party.
>
>“If President Trump decides he’s running, absolutely the RNC needs to
>back him, 100%,” said Michele Fiore, an RNC committeewoman who has
>represented Nevada since 2018. “We can change the bylaws.”
>
>The loyalty to Trump is a fresh reminder that one of America’s major 
>political parties is deepening its alignment with a figure who is 
>undermining the nation’s democratic principles. As he fought to stay in 
>the White House, Trump sparked a violent insurrection at the U.S.
>Capitol. More recently, he has explicitly said that former Vice President
>Mike Pence could and should have overturned the election results,
>something he had no power to do.
>
>Away from the ballrooms of the RNC meeting, Pence rebuked Trump on
>Friday, saying he had “no right to overturn the election” and that his
>former boss was ”wrong” to suggest otherwise.
>
>That kind of dissent was rare in Salt Lake City. In censuring two GOP 
>lawmakers who have criticized Trump and joined the committee probing the 
>Jan. 6 insurrection, the RNC channeled the former president in assailing 
>the panel for leading a “persecution of ordinary citizens engaged in 
>legitimate political discourse.”
>
>Pence, whose life was threatened on Jan. 6, is one of a few Republicans 
>making moves toward a 2024 campaign regardless of whether Trump wages a 
>comeback bid. If he were to run for the White House again, Trump is such
>a powerful force with the GOP base that he probably wouldn’t need the 
>party’s help to become the nominee.
>
>Some Republicans said that’s beside the point.
>
>“There’s probably some disagreement there,” said Bruce Hough, a longtime 
>RNC member from Utah who lost to a Trump ally in a race for party
>co-chair last year. “The RNC has to provide a level playing field for any
>and all comers for president. That’s our job. That’s what we have to do.”
>
>But a stark divide has emerged between veterans like Hough, who are 
>devoted to the GOP as an institution, and a larger group of Trump-aligned
>newcomers, who argue they’re bringing new energy to the party. Their
>chief loyalty, however, seems to be to the former president.
>
>“Leading up to 2020, or most of the time Trump was in office, he sent 
>around his minions to populate the committee with very loyal Trump folks 
>in a lot of red states,” said Bill Palatucci, an RNC committeeman from
>New Jersey and frequent Trump critic. “And they still enjoy that strong 
>majority.”
>
>The RNC’s continued embrace of Trump more than two years before the 2024 
>election is a decided shift from the party’s position in past elections.
>
>In 2012 and 2016, for example, Reince Priebus as RNC chair went to great 
>lengths to ensure each of the candidates was treated equally. The party 
>sanctioned 12 debates, including early rounds that featured up to 17 
>candidates.
>
>“Clearly, there’s a bias that didn’t exist in the past,” said Tim Miller,
>who previously worked for the Republican National Committee and has since
>emerged as a fierce Trump critic. “It’s all Trump all the time coming out
>of there.”
>
>A year ago, just after President Joe Biden’s inauguration, RNC Chair
>Ronna McDaniel declined to encourage Trump to run again when asked,
>citing party rules that require neutrality. She also discouraged attacks
>on those Republicans who voted for Trump’s impeachment.
>
>This week, however, she backed an effort by Trump loyalists to censure 
>Reps. Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., and Adam Kinzinger, R-Ill., a move triggered 
>almost entirely by their fight against Trump’s enduring influence in the 
>party beyond the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol.
>
>The censure, which passed on a voice vote Friday, says the two “support 
>Democrat efforts to destroy President Trump more than they support
>winning back a Republican majority in 2022.”
>
>McDaniel’s shift coincides with the RNC’s reliance on Trump for 
>fundraising. The party has issued hundreds of fundraising appeals since 
>Trump left office evoking his name. One offered this message to 
>prospective small-dollar donors on Tuesday: “YOU must stand with
>President Trump and YOUR Party.”
>
>In speeches made minutes before party leaders voted to censure Cheney and
>Kinzinger, McDaniel and co-chair Tommy Hicks did not mention Trump and 
>stressed the need to unify for the 2022 midterm elections.
>
>Though the committee’s moves demonstrated a sustained loyalty to the 
>former president, outside the winter meeting the censure was condemned by
>opponents as divisive and contrary to frequent appeals from leaders to 
>expand the party’s tent.
>
>The RNC’s discipline “shows more about them than us,” Kinzinger said in
>an interview. “It shows that Trump and Trumpism has overtaken the RNC.”
>
>Cheney in a statement said the move demonstrated how the party had become
>hostage to Trump.
>
>Indeed, this week’s focus on debates that won’t take place until 2024 and
>on anti-Trump Republicans overshadowed the party’s preparations for the 
>midterm elections. That’s notable because the GOP could reclaim control
>of at least one chamber of Congress and several governor’s mansions.
>
>But this week, Trump’s grievances with his Republican critics took center
>stage instead.
>
>“We should be focused on what the voters are focused on,” said Caleb 
>Heimlich, chair of the Republican Party in Washington state, where two of
>three Republican House members voted to impeach Trump following the Jan.
>6 insurrection. “I’ve been talking to voters in Washington state,
>traveling around and nobody talks about Cheney. That’s a D.C. topic.”
>
>Others disagreed.
>
>Harmeet Dhillon, an RNC committeewoman from California, said it was 
>imperative to send a clear message about Cheney and Kinzinger for her and
>the legions of volunteers working to elect Republicans this year.
>
>“The midterms are about a party electing its leaders, and what Adam 
>Kinzinger and Liz Cheney did here is defy their party’s leadership,” 
>Dhillon said. “I do not want to elect people in the midterms who do what 
>these two did.”
>
>On Saturday, Trump weighed in with a statement congratulating the RNC and
>McDaniel for their “great ruling” censuring “two Horrible RINOs.”
>
>Beyond the censure, Republicans set in motion a rules change rooted in 
>another of Trump’s longstanding grievances. A measure advanced that would
>force presidential candidates to sign a pledge saying they will not 
>participate in any debates sponsored by the Commission on Presidential 
>Debates advanced. It is expected to be voted on when RNC members convene 
>again in August.
>
>“We are not walking away from debates,” McDaniel said. “We are walking 
>away from the Commission on Presidential Debates because it’s a biased 
>monopoly that does not serve the best interests of the American people.”
>
>The eventual 2024 nominee, however, will have final say on whether to 
>participate.
>
>Another Republican eyeing a White House campaign, Maryland Gov. Larry 
>Hogan, decried the RNC’s push to punish Trump’s rivals.
>
>“The GOP I believe in is the party of freedom and truth,” the frequent 
>Trump critic tweeted Friday. “It’s a sad day for my party — and the 
>country — when you’re punished just for expressing your beliefs, standing
>on principle, and refusing to tell blatant lies.”
>
>___
>
>Pence's former chief of staff: Trump's claims of overturning election...
>Sunday shows - Trump-Pence division in the spotlight
>Peoples reported from New York.
>
>___



Trump is sick and will be dead before 2024.

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Trump's failed GOP: Party further tightens tie to former president Trump Is A RUSSIAN ASSET <jthomq@gmail.com> - 2022-04-09 12:50 +0000

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