Republican Party releases the Kraken against a sinking Donald Trump
What happens when you’re a historically unpopular president who’s being eaten alive by mounting scandals, your own party has never liked you to begin with, and you’ve begun taking out your frustrations on members of your party who refuse to support your sinking agenda? In the case of Donald Trump, his Republican Party is no longer merely voting against him or speaking out against him; the party is now actively plotting to displace him.
According to a new report from the New York Times, everyone from John Kasich, to Tom Cotton, to Ben Sasse, to his own Vice President Mike Pence are all now going through the early stages of launching their own presidential campaigns for 2020 (link). It’s nothing new to see a primary challenge against a vulnerable sitting president who is running for reelection. Ted Kennedy did it to Jimmy Carter and so on. But it is unprecedented to see a party unleash the Kraken against its own president this soon. Trump has only been in office six months, and his party is already plotting against him. This sets up a tidal wave of upcoming internal GOP conflict which could hurt everyone involved.
Mike Pence is insisting that the NY Times story is untrue. But try telling that to a paranoid Donald Trump, who seems to already believe that he’s only failing because everyone around him is trying to sabotage him. Considering the fundraising infrastructure that Pence has put in place, and the trips to early primary states that other would-be GOP presidential candidates have already begun making, Trump’s paranoia may actually be warranted for once.
So now we wait to see how Donald Trump responds to the revelation that everyone from two Republican Senators to his own Vice President are already gearing up to displace him. If his usual pattern of behavior holds, he’ll begin quickly lashing out anyone he thinks might run in 2020. And that might only serve to motivate the Republican Party to finish him off all the more quickly, even if they had previously been content to wait until 2020. If the Democrats win the midterms, they’ll quickly impeach Trump. But now they might have some GOP support in that impeachment effort.
