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Trump, McConnell vie for GOP control

With their party shattered by the defeat and impeachment of Donald Trump, he and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell are already squaring off for a pitched battle for Republican leadership.

As Trump licks his wounds and lashes out at McConnell as a “dour, sullen and unsmiling political hack,” McConnell, after voting to acquit Trump of the impeachment rap, labels him “practically and morally responsible” for inciting the Jan. 6 insurrection at the Capitol.

In one sense, they are strange bedfellows. Each wants the midterm elections of 2022 to return Congress to GOP control — Trump to demonstrate his continued influence and McConnell to reinstate himself as Senate Majority Leader after losing the post last November.

In such circumstance, their bitter grudge match might be expected to open the path for some other prominent party figure, such as House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy. But his own post-election behavior in rushing to Trump’s Florida resort to demonstrate his fealty after the election earned him more sneers within the party than approval.

At the same time, two conservative Republican senators with 2024 presidential ambitions, Ted Cruz of Texas and Josh Hawley of Missouri, were waiting in the wings, demonstrating inclinations to pick up the pieces of Trump’s political base, should it begin to disintegrate as his social-media megaphone show signs of faltering.

Cruz’s ill-timed family vacation to Cancun amid an epic energy disaster in his home state could well kill his White House ambitions, and Hawley demonstrates an inclination to be the next Joe McCarthy — perhaps too much for a party already in much disarray.

As for the GOP’s 2012 presidential nominee, Sen. Mitt Romney, he claimed the role as prime Trump critic within the party, and is still admired by many old-time moderates but generally seen as yesterday’s story. Others, including Sen. Ben Sasse of Nebraska, have yet to establish themselves as credible national leaders.

Ironically, over the recent years of Trump dominance of party affairs, another Republican who has garnered some interest as an open presidential candidate and now as a sharp Trump naysayer, former Ohio Gov. John Kasich, has become a regular on nightly political talk shows. But he may have broken his spear by speaking at the 2020 Democratic National Convention in support of Joe Biden’s nomination.

In any event, a highly visible prolonged battle between the former president and McConnell as the party’s top elected official isn’t likely to address the need to recover the GOP from the divisions developed over the four years of the Trump political era.

Seldom in recent years has the party more needed a figure advancing unity of policy and conciliation of the sort of past leaders in the mode of the late John McCain and Howard Baker and the now-ailing Bob Dole to get it back on track. For openers, other present-day influential Republicans need to step forward to consider how much damage has been done to the reputation to the Grand Old Party and to the future of the two-party system.

Much of the blame must be borne by the Senate Republicans who ignored the clear-cut case against Donald Trump in lighting the fire of insurrection at the Capitol, and voted to acquit him. It was the opportunity to slam the door on the Trump nightmare, and instead now an independent commission inquiring into the event is required to clean up the latest stain on American democracy.

While Trump may have lost much of the public megaphone by being banned by Twitter, his hunger for the spotlight no doubt will lead to further behavior tarnishing the party in the months ahead.

Jules Witcover’s latest book is “The American Vice Presidency: From Irrelevance to Power,” published by Smithsonian Books. You can respond to this column at juleswitcovercomcast.net.

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