Republicans are in something of a predicament these days. The party willingly hitched its wagon to a horse that, in addition to being loose in a hospital, has managed to drag the GOP firmly out of the White House and decidedly, albeit narrowly, into the congressional minority as well. And now, out of power and stuck with an ex-president who would just as readily blow them up as he would help them out, Republicans are stuck navigating their way through a Scylla and Charybdis of their own making.
There are Republicans — the Matt Gaetzes and Marjorie Taylor Greenes of the caucus — who see the way forward as a wholehearted embrace of, if not Trump himself, at least his legacy, and the sizable MAGA base that comes with it. Others — your Mitt Romneys and Mitch McConnells and the like — believe the best thing they can do for the party is to treat Trump as an aberration and try to put him in their rearview mirrors as quickly as possible without pissing off his base too much.
There’s no “right” answer here. And like all things Trump, the GOP is damned if they do, and damned if they don’t. With that in mind, get ready for four years of bad-faith Republican attacks on Democrats for irrevocably dividing the country, simply by not being Republicans. In fact, it’s already begun. Continue reading.