NEW YORK (AP) — Senate Republicans blame the Republican National Committee. The RNC blames two Republican House members. They blame former President Donald Trump. And Trump blames Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell.
In the midst of the GOP’s first major election year blowup, each bloc believes it represents the real Republican Party and its best interests in the bid to regain control of Congress.
The Republican rift over a symbolic RNC vote to censure Trump’s two GOP House critics has exposed in stark contrast the competing forces fighting to control the party. The sudden burst of infighting shattered a period of relative Republican peace just as party leaders insist they need to come together to defeat Democrats in the looming midterms.
But this week, at least, Republican unity is hard to find.
“Mitch McConnell does not speak for the Republican Party, and does not represent the views of the vast majority of its voters,” Trump said in a statement Wednesday. Instead of fighting President Joe Biden’s agenda, the former president said, McConnell “bails out the radical left and the RINOs” — shorthand for Republicans In Name Only.
To drive home his point, Trump issued another statement later in the day saying McConnell’s position is “so against what Republicans are about.”
At issue were McConnell’s comments a day earlier in which he criticized the RNC for censuring Reps. Liz Cheney of Wyoming and Adam Kinzinger of Illinois at the party’s winter meeting in Salt Lake City. The two Republicans sit on a Democrat-led House committee that is aggressively investigating the violent Jan. 6 siege at the U.S. Capitol and has subpoenaed many in the former president’s inner circle.
