Will The Republican Party Survive The Trump Era? Some Predict ‘Civil War’

In the wake of at least one win for Democrats in the Senate, some Republicans are saying out loud what many had been thinking for months: President Trump, despite his popularity among loyalists, has damaged party fortunes more than he has helped them.

Republicans lost the House of Representatives in 2018 and may lose the Senate as votes are counted in Georgia's runoff election. A last-ditch effort to challenge Trump’s election loss, without evidence of substantive fraud, has further damaged the Republican brand, according to some conservative critics.

In a Jan. 6 column in the New York Times, former Republican Sen. Jeff Flake of Arizona wrote a blistering indictment of the president and the Republicans who still support him.

“Mr. Trump has taken many in my party with him, all of whom seem to have learned the wrong lessons from this anomalous presidency,” Flake said. “George Orwell, after all, meant for his work to serve as a warning, not as a template.”

Flake went on to call Trump a “dangerous demagogue” who has led his party on a path of rejecting “core conservative principles.”

Flake’s column was re-tweeted by some of Trump’s other conservative critics, including longtime political analyst Bill Kristol, who has gone so far as to call Trump’s presidency "the end of an era."

Among those on the frontlines of the conservative anti-Trump front has been the Lincoln Project. Kurt Bardella, the group’s senior advisor, thinks the Trump era has set “the opening stages of … all-out civil war” among Republicans.

The battle, he said, is between “those who still support democracy and believe that our republic comes first and those willing to cast it aside in a craven attempt to try to hold on to power.”

Still, many Republicans, including Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas and Sen. Josh Hawley and Missouri, are still betting on Trump’s popularity among conservatives as the 2024 election looms.

GOP strategist Antonia Ferrier does not think Trumpism is going anywhere.

"If there are those who believe that the Republican Party is just going to snap back to some status quo ante of, say, the Bush administration, I think that is misguided,” she told National Public Radio.

But the party's disarray may have been on full display Wednesday, as several Capitol buildings were evacuated after pro-Trump demonstrators stormed the area during the joint session of Congress where the Electoral College vote was to be formally certified.

The chaos generated a sharp response from Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida.