Donald Trump campaigned against the Republican Party establishment to win the White House. After two of its more prominent members fought back, calling Trump nothing less than a danger to democracy, the president showed no signs of letting up Wednesday.
The rebellion comes at the worst possible time, as the party is trying to thread the needle on a promised massive tax cut that’s helping bolster record stock market gains.
The ferocity of the attacks by senators Jeff Flake of Arizona and Bob Corker of Tennessee shows how much Trump has already changed the GOP, leaving little room for outspoken, down-the-line conservatives like Flake or business-minded Republicans like Corker. Flake, who said he will retire at the end of 2018, lamented the “degradation” of U.S. politics, while Corker, who said late last month he will retire, accused Trump of “debasing” the nation.
Trump hit back Wednesday morning, tweeting that the reason Flake and Corker “dropped out of the Senate race is very simple, they had zero chance of being elected. Now act so hurt & wounded!”
Later, as he prepared to board Marine One, he told reporters on the White House lawn that he didn’t see signs of broader division within the party. “The Republicans are very, very well united,” Trump said.
What’s not clear is what would take the establishment’s place. One possibility is more Republicans in Trump’s image -- candidates backed by his former chief strategist Stephen Bannon, who already has contenders for the two Senate seats. But many Republicans seriously question whether that kind of party can hold a majority in Congress, let alone recapture the White House in 2020. Trump’s current approval rating is 36 percent.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has made clear that he will back the kinds of Republicans who he thinks can beat Democrats, rather than the more populist figures backed by Bannon, whose Breitbart News site cheered Flake’s retirement with a flashing headline that read, “WINNING.”
‘Hostile Takeover’
“Clearly Trump has been to some elements a hostile takeover,” said Tom Davis, a former House Republican who chaired the National Republican Congressional Committee from 1998 to 2002. “It’s a very uncomfortable coalition.”
As Flake and Corker seared the president, the rest of the Republican Party largely ducked for cover, trying to steer the conversation back to their promised tax-cut plan. Most emerged from a closed-door lunch meeting with Trump saying the party remained focused on its tax mission.
“There were no fireworks,” said Republican Senator Ted Cruz of Texas. “It was a positive and productive conversation all around.”
Trump is “very focused on delivering results," Cruz said. "A significant part of the conversation concerned tax reform. We have got to get that done. I believe we will get it done, but we’ve got a lot of work to do to reach agreement and bring the Senate together to reach consensus.”
But Tuesday began with Corker giving a TV interview where he said Trump should stay out of the tax debate and that his foreign policy could lead to a world war. Trump fired back, saying the senator couldn’t get elected “dog-catcher.” Corker retorted with a searing critique of Trump’s presidency, calling him untruthful and saying he was “devolving.”
‘Dangerous’ Leadership
Flake, who warned Tuesday on the Senate floor that Trump’s leadership is “dangerous to democracy,” said that he chose not to run for re-election next year because Republican voters will punish candidates like him who don’t go along with Trump.
To win, he said in a CNN interview, he’d have to run a “campaign that I couldn’t be proud of” because he’d have to pledge support to Trump.
“It’s not enough to be conservative anymore,” he said. “You have to be angry about it.”
Eventually, he said, Republican voters will come to see Trump’s behavior as inappropriate, but that hasn’t happened yet.
Flake, in an interview with CNN Wednesday morning after Trump’s tweet, acknowledged the difficulty of winning re-election if he’s critical of the president. “It’s very difficult to be re-elected in the Republican Party right now and Arizona in particular. It doesn’t matter so much the policies you adopt or your votes, it’s if you’re with the president," he said. "I think when the president is wrong you have to call him out and sometimes he’s wrong.”
‘Warning Shot’
Great America Alliance, a group aligned with Bannon, said in a statement that Flake’s decision not to run for re-election “should serve as another warning shot to the failed Republican establishment that backed Flake and others like them that their time is up.”
Bannon has been backing challengers to some incumbent Republican senators and aims to depose McConnell. He’s already scored one victory in an Alabama primary by supporting Roy Moore, the former judge who’s been accused of bigotry, in a successful runoff election against Senator Luther Strange, who was the choice of Trump and McConnell.
For now, it’s unclear whether anyone can harness the energy of the Republican electorate. Trump appealed to many mainstream Republicans in the 2016 election because of the potential to deliver on shared goals that included loosening federal regulations and confirming more conservative judges to federal courts, Davis said. But more and more, Trump’s support centers on a base that just supports him in a cult-like way, he added.
Both Corker and Flake are reliable conservatives whose actions may coax other GOP lawmakers to start having a more public conversation about Trump’s tactics, a discussion that so far has been a more private one for many lawmakers in the party, said Julian Zelizer, a presidential historian at Princeton University.
Space Invaders
“These are not mavericks,” Zelizer said of the two senators. “It creates space for others to speak out.’’
Although Corker’s seat is likely to stay in Republican control, Flake’s decision to not seek a second term in 2018 may help Democrats put the thin Republican Senate majority in jeopardy. Flake was facing a primary challenge from Kelli Ward, a former state senator who has the backing of Bannon. Ward lost the GOP Senate primary last year to Senator John McCain, who also has been critical of Trump.
The Democrats’ top candidate for Flake’s seat is Representative Kyrsten Sinema, considered a moderate. The nonpartisan Cook Political Report rates the race as a toss-up.
Democratic Senator Chris Van Hollen, who runs the party’s campaign arm, sounded hopeful Tuesday that Flake’s seat now will be ripe for a Democratic takeover. But Democrats would need to win a net gain of three seats next year to take the chamber, a daunting task given the many Republicans running in safe states.
‘Petty Comments’
Trump’s spokeswoman was dismissive of Flake’s retirement and his broadside on Trump.
“Based on the lack of support he has from the people of Arizona, it’s probably a good move,” White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said of Flake’s decision not to seek re-election. She called Flake’s and Corker’s criticisms of Trump “petty comments.”
But Trump’s actions Tuesday, where he joined a fight with Corker early in the day by tweeting a succession of insults -- changing the subject away from the GOP’s emerging tax plan -- underscored that he could just blow up that debate, Zelizer said.
“It’s a situation where he’s not changing his style, just as the big tax push comes,” he said.
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