The GOP Is Still In Danger Of Splitting Apart

In Donald Trump's waning days in office, he was afraid that he might be losing his grip on the Republican Party. He was losing all of his court cases, and he couldn't get Republican election officials to overturn the results of the 2020 election (giving him another term in office).

He began to consider starting his own political party, and he even had a name for that party -- the Patriot Party. He figured he could take a significant chunk of voters away from the Republican Party, and polls showed that was probably true. They reported that about one-third of the GOP base would follow Trump to his new party. If Trump couldn't destroy the Republican Party, he could certainly do it some serious damage.

But as many GOP officials began to stick up for Trump (themselves afraid of the base), and make excuses for his criminal conduct, Trump put the plans for the new party on the shelf. It became obvious that those GOP officials were going to fall in line.

But that doesn't mean the GOP civil war is over. It's not. There are a significant number of people that are leaving the Republican Party because they cannot support Trump, and other moderates and decent conservatives that are still in the party but also find it problematic to accept Trump as the party leader.

These people are now considering their own efforts to start a new political party (and names has been suggested -- The Integrity Party or The Center-Right Party). Here is how Tim Reid described this new effort at Reuters.com:

Dozens of former Republican officials, who view the party as unwilling to stand up to former President Donald Trump and his attempts to undermine U.S. democracy, are in talks to form a center-right breakaway party, four people involved in the discussions told Reuters.

The early stage discussions include former elected Republicans, former officials in the Republican administrations of Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, George W. Bush and Trump, ex-Republican ambassadors and Republican strategists, the people involved say.

More than 120 of them held a Zoom call last Friday to discuss the breakaway group, which would run on a platform of “principled conservatism,” including adherence to the Constitution and the rule of law - ideas those involved say have been trashed by Trump.

The plan would be to run candidates in some races but also to endorse center-right candidates in others, be they Republicans, independents or Democrats, the people say. . . .

The talks highlight the wide intraparty rift over Trump’s false claims of election fraud and the deadly Jan. 6 storming of the U.S. Capitol. Most Republicans remain fiercely loyal to the former president, but others seek a new direction for the party.