GOP puts on a show of disunity as it edges toward House majority

CNN
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On the eve of former President Donald Trump’s possible announcement of a third White House bid, the GOP is in a state of Trump-induced acrimony.

It’s the kind of uproar in which Trump, the chaos agent who prospers most when the cacophony is loudest, often thrives and can use to fragment opposition to his power.

In the post-election frenzy, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy is facing a more complicated path than he expected to become speaker, leaving him with a thin prospective House majority at best. Incredibly, the GOP is yet to reach the 218 seats needed to win the House a week after the election; a pickup overnight Monday has the party at 215 with 16 races to go, per CNN projections Tuesday morning.

Still, the California Republican did get a standing ovation after calling on his conference to show unity on Monday ahead of Tuesday’s leadership elections.

Back-biting has also broken out in the Senate GOP, with Texas Sen. Ted Cruz slamming veteran Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, while Florida Sen. Rick Scott mulls a challenge despite his failed stewardship of the GOP campaign committee’s bid to win the Senate. A fight also looms over control of the Republican National Committee.

The finger-pointing is emerging over a disappointing performance for Republicans. Trump-style extremism was repudiated at the ballot box in a vote that ought to have been a referendum on an unpopular sitting president in a tough economy – rather than one on a predecessor who left the White House but won’t go away.

There is every logical reason for Republicans to move on from Trump. One lesson from last week’s election is that voters didn’t reject Republicans per se. Authentic conservatives who distanced themselves from the ex-president, like Govs. Brian Kemp of Georgia, Mike DeWine of Ohio, Ron DeSantis of Florida and Chris Sununu of New Hampshire cruised to reelection.

But multiple Trump-backed candidates for governor, secretary of state posts, and Senate and House seats flamed out. One of the most high-profile election deniers, Arizona Republican Kari Lake, will lose to Democrat Katie Hobbs, CNN projected Monday evening. Democrats in Michigan, meanwhile, won control of the state legislature, which had spent the last two years on election-denying distractions. Swearing loyalty to Trump and his election fraud hot air proved to be a disastrous campaign strategy for many candidates.

The projected defeat of Lake in the Arizona governor’s race on Monday completes a near total rout of 2020 election deniers in swing states whom Trump thrust into the midterm elections.

Yet despite this staggering record of failure, the ex-president will host a big event at his Mar-a-Lago resort on Tuesday evening that is expected to culminate in the launch of a new presidential bid rooted in his false claims of a stolen election.

His determination to run again is already drawing widespread opposition among many Republicans on Capitol Hill, who are…