WASHINGTON (Reuters) – It is still Donald Trump’s Republican Party – at least for now.
The vote by 43 of the 50 Republican senators to acquit Trump on the charge of inciting last month’s deadly riot at the U.S. Capitol, with only seven voting for conviction, highlights just how powerful a grip he has on the party he remade in his image over the past five years.
The former president, who has largely stayed out of sight at his Florida home since leaving the White House on Jan. 20, commands fervent loyalty among his supporters, forcing most Republican politicians to pledge their fealty and fear his wrath.
But after two impeachments, months of false claims that his election loss to Democrat Joe Biden was rigged, and an assault on the U.S. Capitol by his supporters that left five people dead, Trump is also political poison in many of the swing districts that often decide American elections.
That leaves Republicans in a precarious position as they try to forge a winning coalition in the 2022 elections for control of Congress and a 2024 White House race that might include Trump as a candidate.
“It’s hard to imagine Republicans winning national elections without Trump supporters anytime soon,” said Alex Conant, a Republican strategist and aide to Senator Marco Rubio during his 2016 presidential primary race against Trump.
“The party is facing a real Catch 22: it can’t win with Trump but it’s obvious it can’t win without him either,” he said.
Trump has not signaled his long-range political plans for after the trial, although he has publicly hinted at another run for the White House and he is reportedly keen to help primary challengers to Republicans in Congress who voted to impeach or convict him.
“Whether he does run again is up to him, but he’s still going to have an enormous amount of influence on both the direction of the policy and also in evaluating who is a serious standard-bearer for that message,” one adviser said. “You can call it a kingmaker or whatever you want to call it.”
Trump has maintained strong support from Republicans in polls even since the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol.
Just days after the riot, a Reuters/Ipsos poll found 70% of Republicans still approved of Trump’s job performance, and a later poll found a similar percentage believed he should be allowed to run for office again.
But outside his party he is unpopular. A new Ipsos poll published on Saturday showed that 71% of Americans believed Trump was at least partially responsible for starting the assault on the Capitol. Fifty percent believed he should be convicted in the Senate with 38% opposed and 12% unsure.
Trump’s defenders in the Senate argued that the trial was unconstitutional because Trump had already left office and that his remarks ahead of the riot were protected by the constitutional right to free speech. But a majority of senators including seven Republicans rejected that view.
FILE PHOTO: U.S. President Donald Trump waves as he arrives at Palm Beach International Airport in West Palm Beach, Florida, U.S., January 20, 2021. REUTERS/Carlos Barria/File Photo
Democrats said many Republican senators were afraid to vote with their conscience to convict Trump out of fear of retribution from his supporters.
“If this vote was taken in secret, there would be a conviction,” Democratic Senator Richard Blumenthal said.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell was among the Republicans who voted to acquit Trump on Saturday, though he later slammed the former president as “practically and morally responsible” for provoking the violence.
His position illustrated how some Republican leaders are trying to distance themselves from Trump and limit his influence without triggering the full-blown fury of Trump and his supporters.
McConnell’s words will not help the Republican party in the 2022 mid-term congressional elections, Trump ally Senator Lindsey Graham, who wants to unite the party under Trump’s banner, said on Sunday.
“I think Senator McConnell’s speech, he got a load off his chest obviously, but unfortunately he put a load on the back of Republicans,” Graham told Fox News Sunday. Republican candidates in 2022 will inevitably be asked what they thought of McConnell’s denunciation of Trump’s actions, Graham said.
But Maryland Governor Larry Hogan, a moderate Republican, said there will be a big fight for the soul of the party.
“I think we’ve got to move on from the cult of Donald Trump and return to the basic principles that the party’s always stood for,” Hogan told NBC’s “Meet the Press.”
Trump’s continued sway, however, was evident in House of Representatives Republican leader Kevin McCarthy’s visit last month to the former president’s Mar-a-Lago club in Palm Beach, Florida, where they huddled on strategy for the 2022 congressional elections.
That visit came just three weeks after McCarthy had enraged Trump by saying he bore responsibility for the Capitol riot. McCarthy later backtracked, saying he did not believe Trump provoked the assault.
POLITICAL BACKLASH
The few lawmakers who have broken with Trump have suffered a stinging backlash. This continued after the impeachment verdict as Republican senators who found Trump guilty, including Bill Cassidy of Louisiana and Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania, were criticized by party officials at home.
Representative Liz Cheney, the No. 3 Republican in the House of Representatives and one of 10 who voted for Trump’s impeachment, quickly faced an effort by conservatives to remove her from her leadership post. She survived it, but Trump has vowed to throw his support behind a primary challenger to her.
In Arizona, which backed Biden and elected a Democratic senator in November, the state party censured three prominent Republicans who had clashed with Trump while he was in office – Governor Doug Ducey, former Senator Jeff Flake and Cindy McCain, widow of the late Senator John McCain. When Senator Ben Sasse of Nebraska was threatened with censure by his state party for criticizing Trump, he suggested it was down to a cult of personality.
“Let’s be clear about why this is happening. It is because I still believe, as you used to, that politics isn’t about the weird worship of one dude,” Sasse said in a video addressed to the party leadership in Nebraska. He was one of the seven Republican senators who voted to convict Trump on Saturday.
The fissures have led to an open debate in conservative circles over how far right to lean. At Fox News, the cable news network that played a key role in Trump’s rise to power, Fox Corp Chief Executive Lachlan Murdoch this week told investors the outlet would stick to its “center right” position.
Trump tore into the network after its early, and ultimately accurate, election-night projection that he lost in Arizona, presenting an opportunity for further-right video networks to draw disaffected Trump supporters.
“We don’t need to go further right,” Murdoch said. “We don’t believe America is further right, and we’re obviously not going to pivot left.”Dozens of former Republican officials, disillusioned by the party’s failure to stand up to Trump, have held talks to form a new center-right party, though multiple congressional Republicans rejected the idea. Advisers say Trump himself has talked about forming a breakaway Patriot Party, exacerbating Republican divisions.
While Trump maintains control over the party for now, several Republican senators said during the impeachment trial that the stain left by the deadly siege of the Capitol and Trump’s months of false claims about widespread election fraud would cripple his chances of winning power again in 2024.
“After the American public sees the whole story laid out here … I don’t see how Donald Trump could be reelected to the presidency again,” Republican Senator Lisa Murkowski, who also voted for a conviction, told reporters during the trial.
With Trump out of office and blocked from Twitter, his favorite means of communication, some Republicans said his hold on the party could fade as new issues and personalities emerge.
Republican Senator John Cornyn, a Trump ally, said the former president’s legacy had suffered permanent damage.
“Unfortunately, while President Trump did a lot of good, his handling of the post-election period is what he’s going to be remembered for,” Cornyn said. “And I think that’s a tragedy.”
Reporting by John Whitesides; Additional reporting by David Morgan, Steve Holland and Susan Cornwell; Editing by Scott Malone and Daniel Wallis
OTTAWA – Prime Minister Justin Trudeau says the NDP is caving to political pressure from Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre when it comes to their stance on the consumer carbon price.
Trudeau says he believes Jagmeet Singh and the NDP care about the environment, but it’s “increasingly obvious” that they have “no idea” what to do about climate change.
On Thursday, Singh said the NDP is working on a plan that wouldn’t put the burden of fighting climate change on the backs of workers, but wouldn’t say if that plan would include a consumer carbon price.
Singh’s noncommittal position comes as the NDP tries to frame itself as a credible alternative to the Conservatives in the next federal election.
Poilievre responded to that by releasing a video, pointing out that the NDP has voted time and again in favour of the Liberals’ carbon price.
British Columbia Premier David Eby also changed his tune on Thursday, promising that a re-elected NDP government would scrap the long-standing carbon tax and shift the burden to “big polluters,” if the federal government dropped its requirements.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 13, 2024.
Simon Jolin-Barrette, minister responsible for consumer protection, has tabled a bill to force merchants to calculate tips based on the price before tax.
That means on a restaurant bill of $100, suggested tips would be calculated based on $100, not on $114.98 after provincial and federal sales taxes are added.
The bill would also increase the rebate offered to consumers when the price of an item at the cash register is higher than the shelf price, to $15 from $10.
And it would force grocery stores offering a discounted price for several items to clearly list the unit price as well.
Businesses would also have to indicate whether taxes will be added to the price of food products.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 12, 2024.
Quebec legislature member Youri Chassin has announced he’s leaving the Coalition Avenir Québec government to sit as an Independent.
He announced the decision shortly after writing an open letter criticizing Premier François Legault’s government for abandoning its principles of smaller government.
In the letter published in Le Journal de Montréal and Le Journal de Québec, Chassin accused the party of falling back on what he called the old formula of throwing money at problems instead of looking to do things differently.
Chassin says public services are more fragile than ever, despite rising spending that pushed the province to a record $11-billion deficit projected in the last budget.
He is the second CAQ member to leave the party in a little more than one week, after economy and energy minister Pierre Fitzgibbon announced Sept. 4 he would leave because he lost motivation to do his job.
Chassin says he has no intention of joining another party and will instead sit as an Independent until the end of his term.
He has represented the Saint-Jérôme riding since the CAQ rose to power in 2018, but has not served in cabinet.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 12, 2024.
