The week’s splitscreen cast into stark relief just how much the Republican Party remains riven over whether to believe the lie that Trump won, a perhaps unbridgeable divide. Only on rare occasions, though, does the divide come to light: in the heat of a speakers’ race, for example, or grand jury testimony with immunity in one’s back pocket, or in a presidential debate. Except for moments like those, the party and its members are mostly keen to keep the divisions hidden. Some things, after all, are just better left unsaid. Or easier.
But until the party reckons with them, it can’t truly move forward, said Fergus Cullen, the former chair of the New Hampshire Republican Party.
“Can we Republicans agree on three things, please? One: the 2020 election was not stolen,” Cullen said. “Two: What happened on January 6 was a bad thing. Three: We shouldn’t be nominating somebody facing 91 criminal indictments.”
But after three weeks mired in a speaker stalemate, and fewer than 90 days before the Iowa caucuses, and four months ahead of Trump’s trial in federal court on charges he allegedly tried to steal the 2020 election, this combustible mix of issues is about to become front and center.
“It just shows that there’s a lack of understanding or lack of willingness to confront what happened that day and why it was so dangerous,” said a former Republican congressional leadership staffer granted anonymity to assess the party frankly. “And I think that’s borne out the stranglehold that Donald Trump still has on the party.”
This person added: “One side is winning and one side losing and the side that is winning right now inside the party… are the people that were not willing to accept the results of the election and wanted to overturn it.”