International, Owntalk.co.id – Pat Cowan, a Republican official in west Texas, would rather blow up her party than see it controlled by “weak” Republicans who increasingly are distancing themselves from President Donald Trump since the U.S. Capitol riots he is accused of inciting.
“You can’t tell those Republicans from the Democrats!” she scoffed in an interview at her home in Levelland, Texas.
Like many others here in Hockley County, where Cowan is the party chairwoman, she believes Trump’s baseless claims that he was robbed of a Nov. 3 election victory by voter fraud. She’s incensed at the handful of Texas Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives who certified Democrat Joe Biden’s election win in the hours after the storming of the Capitol on Jan. 6. She’s even angrier at the 10 Republican House members from other states who voted to impeach Trump for allegedly inciting the insurrection.
“That has led a lot of us to think that we’re just going to have to come up with a new party,” she said, “and I think that Trump is going to lead it!”
Cowan’s stark view of the party’s future – echoed by many of the two dozen Texas voters and party officials interviewed by Reuters – underscores how Trump, after four years of dividing the nation, now has done the same to his own party. Many Republican candidates in solidly conservative states like Texas face intense pressure to perpetuate Trump’s false election-fraud narrative as voters make loyalty to Trump a litmus test for their support in future elections. That loyalty was on display last week in the Texas state legislature as several Republicans introduced bills to restrict voting access, including limits on mail-in voting and early voting, citing a need to prevent fraud.
In Georgia, turmoil wracked the party during two ultimately failed campaigns by Republican candidates for the U.S. Senate as Trump attacked Republican Governor Brian Kemp and Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger over their refusal to help him overturn his Georgia election loss. A billboard in Forsyth County, a rural Trump stronghold, last week called Kemp and Raffensperger “treasonist RINOs” – Republicans in name only – who should be jailed. In Arizona, the state party will soon vote on whether to censure prominent Republicans including Cindy McCain – wife of the late Senator John McCain – for being insufficiently loyal to Trump.
Other Republicans, however, warn that caving to Trump loyalists could irreparably damage a party that has already lost the White House and both houses of Congress under Trump’s watch. Several Republican strategists said politicians backing Trump’s false election-fraud claims may see short-term rewards – but at the cost of undermining their own voters’ faith in U.S. elections, along with the party’s credibility and unity in the long term.***