Consider This from NPR - The Debate Is Over: Donald Trump Owns The Republican Party

Episode Date: May 13, 2021

This week, House Republicans voted to expel Rep. Liz Cheney from party leadership after the Wyoming congresswoman repeatedly called out former President Trump's false claims about the 2020 election. Republican Congressman John Curtis of Utah told NPR the party's decision had nothing to do with her opposition to the former President.The fracture reminds Wall Street Journal Executive Washington Editor Gerald Seib of another era when Republican leadership tried to capture and control a growing political force: the tea party. Seib is the author of We Should Have Seen It Coming: From Reagan to Trump — A Front-Row Seat to a Political Revolution. To take a short, anonymous survey about Consider This, please visit npr.org/springsurvey. In participating regions, you'll also hear a local news segment that will help you make sense of what's going on in your community.Email us at [e-mail] more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Hey, before we get to the show, we're trying to make this podcast better, and we would love some feedback from you about how we can do that. So to help us out, you can find a short anonymous survey at npr.org slash spring survey. And that link is in our episode notes. It only takes a few minutes, and it's a big help. Again, npr.org slash spring survey. Thanks. One of the clearest explanations out there for what's going on with the Republican Party came from Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina. Graham, you might remember, was one of many Republicans who, after the Capitol riot on January 6th, Trump and I, we've had a hell of a journey. I hate it being this way. seemed to signal that his party's relationship with Donald Trump was at its ends.

All I can say is count me out. Enough is enough. That was January 6th. Exactly four months later, on May 6th, Lindsey Graham was on Fox News discussing Liz Cheney, the Wyoming congresswoman who was forced out of Republican House leadership this week for calling out President Trump's lies about the 2020 election. I've always liked Liz Cheney, but she's made a determination that the Republican Party can't grow with President Trump. I've determined we can't grow without him. The Republican Party can't survive without Donald Trump. That's the message now. Yeah, I would just say to my Republican colleagues,

can we move forward without President Trump? The answer is no. Graham's statement was notable for the way it laid bare a political calculation his party is making. When you hear Republicans like Lindsey Graham talk about that, like we can't survive without Trump moving forward, this is not about needing Trump as sort of the engine to drive the Republican Party. Tim Alberta covers politics and the GOP for The Atlantic. It's out of a fear that Trump, if spited, could essentially take a wrecking ball to the Republican

Party. And so that's what many Republicans, even though they won't speak this publicly, that's the fear they have is that he could turn on them and turn on the party itself. Consider this. Any debate that existed after January 6th is over. Donald Trump still controls the Republican Party, and the Republican Party is basically along for the ride. From NPR, I'm Adi Cornish. It's Thursday, May 13th. This message comes from NPR sponsor, Womply. Womply is committed to helping self-employed workers and small businesses get their PPP loan. Application determines eligibility.

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Listen to the Invisibilia podcast from NPR. It's Consider This from NPR. Now, this has all been building for months. As the events of January 6th slid further into the rearview mirror, more Republicans have begun to pretend that it just kind of never happened. You know, if you didn't know the TV footage was a video from January the 6th, you would actually think it was a normal tourist visit. On Tuesday, at a House Oversight Committee hearing focused on the government's response

to the Capitol riot, Congressman Andrew Clyde of Georgia implied it was all no big deal. There was an undisciplined mob. There were some rioters and some who committed acts of vandalism. But let me be clear, there was no insurrection, and to call it an insurrection, in my opinion, is a bold-faced lie. Okay, sure. A first-term congressman from a solidly red district in northern Georgia. Well, what about party leadership? I don't think anybody is questioning the legitimacy of the presidential election.

I think that is all over with. That Tuesday statement from House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy was stunning. Not just because McCarthy himself once said this. President Trump won this election, so everyone who's listening, do not be quiet. We cannot allow this to happen before our very eyes. That was last November. McCarthy's claim this week that no one is questioning the election was also stunning because that's exactly what former President Trump is still doing. In a statement from Monday night, Trump compared the 2020 race to a thief robbing a jewelry store and called it the greatest election fraud in the history of America.

I will do everything I can to ensure that the former president never again gets anywhere near the Oval Office. That was Liz Cheney on Tuesday when Republicans in the House voted to expel her from their leadership. Unlike many Republicans, Cheney has not tried to move on from election denialism or whitewash the Capitol riot. We cannot be dragged backward by the very dangerous lies of a former president. Thank you. She voted to impeach Trump in January. She said in February that the GOP must, quote, ignore the temptation to look away from symbols of hate displayed by Trump supporters on January 6th. And it's very important, especially for us as Republicans, to make clear that we aren't the party of white supremacy. In March, Cheney said

Trump should have no future in the party. In April, she said she wouldn't support him if he ran in 2024. And last week, she wrote in a Washington Post op-ed that the GOP was at a turning point and that Republicans faced a question. Quote, whether we will join Trump's crusade to delegitimize and undo the legal outcome of the 2020 election with all the consequences that might have. Liz Cheney, how about that? Throughout all of this, the former president has made his feelings for Liz Cheney clear. This is a speech he gave at the Conservative Political Action Conference, or CPAC, a few months back. Her poll numbers have dropped faster than any human being I've ever seen. In that same speech, Adam Kinzinger, Trump cited by name to a chorus of boos.

Each Republican in the House and Senate who opposed him in the weeks after January 6th. Get rid of them all. And Republican voters, they're getting the message. He says what he thinks, and I don't hide the fact that I wasn't a fan of our last president's character issues.

Just listen to how the audience at a state GOP convention treated Mitt Romney a few weeks ago. Aren't you embarrassed? Aren't you embarrassed, Romney asked his own party supporters. So this all added up to the vote this week by House Republicans to expel Liz Cheney from their party leadership. It has nothing to do with her statements. It's that we need somebody who is not looking in the review mirror, but is looking forward. Republican Congressman John Curtis of Utah doesn't deny the result of the presidential election. Like, hey, you know, President Trump lost. Can we move on, please? Right.

But speaking to NPR this week, he did deny that the party's vote on the Wyoming congresswoman had anything to do with her opposition to Donald Trump. That's a really false narrative. We actually took a vote about two months ago where some people felt like she shouldn't serve because of that. And she passed that vote in an overwhelming fashion. So why did she get voted out today? Because since that time, it's not the statement she's making.

It's that she is not leading this party in a way that will help us accomplish our goals and objectives. So what are the Republican Party's goals and objectives? In the short term, regaining control of the House of Representatives in 2022. And that brings us back to the calculation that they cannot do so without former President Trump. They're probably right about that calculation. I think the question is whether they can capture the energy of the Trump army and not be consumed by the energy. Jerry Seib is the executive Washington editor at The Wall Street Journal, and he wrote a book about the Republican Party and Donald Trump called We Should Have Seen It Coming. And that's his basic idea about what's happening right now, that the Republican Party has seen this movie before. Namely, a little more than a decade ago,

when GOP leadership in Congress tried to capture and control the energy of another growing political force in their party, the Tea Party. What Republicans learned along the way, though, was that they couldn't really control the Tea Party that they had used to their own electoral advantage. John Boehner became so frustrated with the Tea Party that they had used to their own electoral advantage. John Boehner became so frustrated with the Tea Party caucus that he decided to quit a speaker. Paul Ryan took over. He became frustrated. Eric Cantor, who was the number two Republican in the House for a while, actually was defeated in a Republican primary by a Tea Party upstart. And I think what Republicans learned is that you can try to ride that kind

of bucking bronco, but you might just get thrown off. So what are we looking at when we see Kevin McCarthy oust or back the ousting of Liz Cheney from leadership? Well, I think what is the point of that? Well, I think from from Kevin McCarthy's point of view, he actually, I believe, and he almost said this in a letter he sent out this week, thinks that by pushing McCarthy's point of view, he actually, I believe, and he almost said this in a letter he sent out this week, thinks that by pushing out Liz Cheney, he's actually de-emphasizing the focus on former President Trump, that Liz Cheney is the one who's keeping the focus on Donald Trump, that she's fixated on refuting his claims about the stolen 2020 election.

She insists that he be blamed for the January 6th insurrection at the Capitol. And it is that insistence that is keeping Donald Trump in the conversation, keeping him at the center of things. And that's, of course, where Donald Trump always wants to be anyway. And that's part of the broader strategy to downplay what happened on January 6th. Absolutely. And to move past it in the term that most Republican House members use, move past, move past. And Liz Cheney's argument is, no, we can't move past it in the term that most Republican House members use, move past, move past. And Liz Cheney's argument is, no, we can't move past this. This is too fundamental to where we are. We have to refute this, not move past this, because if we don't, the big lie of the election rid of Liz Cheney, Kevin McCarthy and his colleagues in the House caucus are in fact moving away the focus away from Donald Trump or whether they simply created a platform for Liz Cheney that's much bigger than she had before, where she can keep the focus on Donald Trump and refute the 2020 election claims.

I have a thesis I want you to tell me if I'm wrong. Let's say the Republican Party was a stool. And one leg of the stool was the populists and nationalists. Another leg of the stool were the business and country club Republicans. And another leg was neocons and people who are interested in America's role abroad. And then you've got, who did I leave out? Religious conservatives, probably. The culture warriors? Yeah. And evangelicals.

The stool seems uneven right now. Who's losing? Are we witnessing a breakdown? Well, it's a good analogy. I used a similar one in describing the coalition that Ronald Reagan put together. It was a three-legged stool. It was economic- Yes, I was thinking back to Reagan. Yeah, because it takes one person to bring all those groups together. Well, exactly. Exactly. And so what did Reagan do? Reagan put together a three-legged stool with economic conservatives, national security conservatives,

and religious conservatives. And that held for a long time, for a couple of decades. Then Donald Trump arrives, and as you suggest, he adds the populist part. And that's the big leg of the stool now. The business community feels lost. It doesn't really have a place in either party right now. The Democratic Party has moved to left for a lot of people in the business community. The Republican Party has become populist and anti-big business and anti-big finance and anti-big tech in many ways. And so you're right that you now look at this stool, which looks a little different than it did in Reagan's days, but it's got a new leg, which is the populist leg.

And that's the only one that seems very sturdy right now. I was asking, because it seems like all the people on the outs were in all those clubs that used to be the cool clubs, right? The Mitt Romneys, the Liz Cheneys, even like, I don't know, Lisa Murkowski, right? Like, these kinds of Republicans are on the outs, but each of them sort of represents a wing of the party that's like really lost its power. I think to some extent that's true, or

maybe has temporarily lost its power. That's the great question, I think, for the Republican Party. But if you look at the people that former President Trump goes after, he goes after the Bush family. He goes after the Romneys. As you suggest, he goes after the Cheneys. These are the blue blood establishment family names that really have come to define Republican politics for the last 30 years since Reagan left the scene. And they're all under attack.

And so this is a very much, to go back to my original point, this is very much like the Tea Party was, an attack on the establishment. So given what you've just said, what does the party stand for now, right? Other than loyalty to Trump, when you have Republicans who say that Liz Cheney had to go because she wasn't advancing their priorities, what are the priorities we're talking about? You know, this is, I think, the fundamental question. You know, when Reagan ruled over the Republican Party, it was kind of clear what the conservative principles were, you know, low taxes, reduced central government, lower federal spending, an executive power that's kept in check,

an internationalist view of America's role in the world. None of those things really are Trump beliefs. What you're left with is clearly some positions on immigration, for example, a continued desire for low taxes, but not accompanied by concern about federal deficits. A lot of what you're left with is, I think, the reality of American politics today. And this isn't just true of Republicans or conservatives. This is kind of true across the board. You're defined more by who you're against than what you are for. Republicans are united and Trump people are united by their disdain for Democrats and liberals and progressive politics. It's harder to define what they stand for.

Jerry Seib, executive Washington editor at The Wall Street Journal. His recent book is called We Should Have Seen It Coming, From Reagan to Trump, A Front Row Seat to a Political Revolution. And just a reminder, we'd love to hear some feedback from you on this podcast and how to make it better. There's a link to a quick anonymous survey. You can find that in our episode notes. It's Consider This from NPR.

I'm Audie Cornish.