Trump the Pragmatist Is Losing Grip Over the GOP – A wing of the Republican Party, formerly loyal to former President Donald Trump, is proving that the GOP may no longer be the party of Trump.
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Instead, many Donald Trump loyalists are proving that they are more committed to the Make America Great Again agenda than they are to the man who catapulted conservative populism into the mainstream.
Kevin McCarthy lost a fifth vote to become the next Speaker of the House on Wednesday, despite calls from the former president for Republicans to get behind him.
Writing on Truth Social, former President Donald Trump said on Wednesday morning that “really good conversations” occurred on Monday night, and that Republican House Members should vote for McCarthy and “close the deal.”
“Some really good conversations took place last night, and it’s now time for all of our GREAT Republican House Members to vote for Kevin, close the deal, take the victory, & watch crazy Nancy Pelosi fly back home to a very broken California, the only speaker in U.S. history to have lost the ‘House’ twice!” the former president wrote, adding an additional warning for Republicans not to turn a triumph into an “embarrassing defeat.”
Trump’s posts and phone calls didn’t move a single vote, and Republican rebels are not backing down.
Speaking to Fox News Digital, rebel Republican Rep. Matt Gaetz, one of the highest profile representatives refusing to back McCarthy, responded to the former president’s posts. Gaetz said that Trump’s comments didn’t change his view on McCarthy and House leadership.
“Sad!” Gaetz said, mimicking the way the former president often speaks on social media. “This changes neither my view of McCarthy, nor Trump, nor my vote.”
Rep. Lauren Boebert, one of the most consistent supporters of the former president, also responded to the president by insisting he should tell McCarthy to withdraw from the race.
“Praise the work and the leadership of Byron Donalds. So let’s work together, let’s stop with the campaign smears and tactics to get people to turn against us. Even having my favorite president call us and tell us we need to knock this off — I think it actually needs to be reversed,” Boebert said on the House floor while nominating Republican Florida Representative Byron Donalds to be Speaker during the fifth ballot.
“The president needs to tell Kevin McCarthy that sir you do not have the votes and it’s time to withdraw,” she continued.
Meanwhile, as Trump tries and fails to bring the party into line, shouting into the ether and yielding no results, his biggest rival is positioning himself as the obvious GOP choice for the presidential nomination in 2024.
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis is cultivating a remarkable following not just in his state, where his staunchly Florida-first policies are giving Florida residents a taste of what a more effective Trump presidency could have delivered for America, but across the country.
Overall, the vision for America that Trump offered in 2016 remains popular among Republicans – and while Trump may be willing to give up some of those ideals in the name of deal-making, 20 Republican members of the House are proving that not everyone in the GOP is quite as pragmatic as the former president is.
With Trump diehards loudly expressing their support for the GOP rebels on social media, proving they are willing to risk a “unity” speaker in the name of draining the swamp, it’s clear now that if Trump continues down this path, he could find himself losing his grip over the party entirely.
Perhaps, though, we may be watching that unfold already.
Jack Buckby is 19FortyFive’s Breaking News Editor. He is a British author, counter-extremism researcher, and journalist based in New York. Reporting on the U.K., Europe, and the U.S., he works to analyze and understand left-wing and right-wing radicalization, and reports on Western governments’ approaches to the pressing issues of today. His books and research papers explore these themes and propose pragmatic solutions to our increasingly polarized society.
