What Republicans Think...

What Republicans Think...

• In Washington, Republicans were dealing with a burgeoning crisis in their ranks, with high-profile resignations and bitter infighting over how to deal with an erratic and isolated president. But at the Republican National Committee’s winter meeting on Friday, most party members were operating in a parallel universe. In Florida there was no mention of President Trump’s disruption of the coronavirus relief package or his phone call to the Georgia secretary of state demanding that he help steal the election, both of which contributed to Republicans’ losing control of the Senate.
• Although the R.N.C. chair, Ronna McDaniel, condemned the attack on the Capitol, neither she nor any other speaker so much as publicly hinted at Mr. Trump’s role in inciting a mob assault on America’s seat of government. Party members, one after another, said in interviews that the president did not bear any blame for the violence at the Capitol and indicated that they wanted him to continue to play a leading role in the party.  “I surely embrace President Trump,” said Michele Fiore, the committeewoman from Nevada, where Republicans have lost two Senate races and the governorship since 2016. Ms. Fiore said the president was “absolutely” a positive force in the party.
• Mr. Trump is the first president since Herbert Hoover to preside over the loss of the White House, the House and the Senate in a single term and will be the first since Andrew Johnson to boycott his successor’s inauguration. That hasn’t yet fazed the Republican rank and file. “This room, they’re in denial, and that’s on the record,” Bill Palatucci, a committeeman from New Jersey, said during a break in the Friday session, acknowledging the “damage done to the country” and the Republican “brand” this week.
• The loyalty to Mr. Trump results in part from the turnover on the committee during his term. The president’s top political lieutenants intervened to install loyalists in state and local G.O.P. conventions ahead of 2020. The goal was to prevent any party rule changes that could have made it easier to mount a primary challenge against Mr. Trump, but the end result was to leave the committee heavy with Trump devotees. The changes also accelerated a trend that pre-dated Mr. Trump’s rise: the evolution of the committee from a body filled with canny political professionals and power brokers in their states to one dominated by dogmatic partisans well-marinated in Fox News and Facebook memes. Perhaps more significant, the president has fostered a new wave of activism on the right — and many longstanding G.O.P. leaders fear alienating these newcomers to party politics. “We can’t exist without the people he brought to the party — he’s changed the direction of the party,” said Paul Reynolds, the Republican committeeman from Alabama. “We’re a different party because of the people that came with him, and they make us a better party.”  Reta Hamilton, a committeewoman from Arkansas, said Mr. Trump should play “a leading part” in the G.O.P. in the future for just that reason — “to bring his voters,” she said.  Ms. Hamilton and other R.N.C. members also sought to rationalize questions about the damage to the Capitol and the images of Trump banners and Confederate flags littering the building.
• David Bossie, one of Mr. Trump’s advisers and the Maryland committeeman, insisted that the party’s losses had been on the margins.  “You don’t have to throw out everybody when there’s nothing fundamentally wrong,” Mr. Bossie said.  A handful of committee members, however, believe more reflection is desperately needed, particularly after this week. “We’re whistling past the graveyard,” said Henry Barbour, the Mississippi committeeman, who called Mr. Trump’s conduct before the riot “totally unacceptable.”  Few of his counterparts, though, would criticize the president.  Asked if Mr. Trump was still the effective leader of the G.O.P., the Wyoming Republican chair, Frank Eathorne, said, “The way Wyoming sees it, yes.”