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--:-- Sean Rameswaram: President Trump lost the election two months ago, but since then, you could argue he's been doing his best to lose his party. The Republican Party has, since the election, found itself devolved into infighting and acrimony and finger pointing and also kind of these very fundamental debates about like the core tenets of democracy.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Like, I think the Republican Party is wondering what they are and what they stand for in a more elemental way than it has after past failed elections. McKay Coppins wrote about the GOP's bitter infighting for the Atlantic this week. And with the outgoing president impeding democracy and courting another impeachment, it felt like a good week to step back and talk about where his party is heading next.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Like, you know, in 2012, the Republican Party got together and did an autopsy. And the Republican National Committee did this report where they went through why they lost the 2012 election and the various policy issues they maybe had to moderate on.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: The perception that we're the party of the rich, unfortunately, continues to grow. That's frustrating because we care about every voter. We're the party of growth and opportunity. It was kind of a more normal process. It was like, how can we as a political party do better in future elections?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: The debates that are happening inside the Republican Party now are way more radical in a lot of ways. I mean, they're questioning whether they should go along with the results of a presidential election. It's a move that will delight President Trump and rankle Republican leadership.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Josh Hawley becoming the first Republican senator to say he'll object when Congress meets next week to certify Joe Biden's win. Some of the rising stars are trying to prove their value to the base of the party by calling for anti-democratic power grabs.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I mean, this is about the integrity of our elections. And this is about taking a stand where you can take a stand. When you talk to lawmakers or, you know, smart conservative thinkers right now, the questions that they're asking are more about what is the party's place in the American experiment? What is the future of small-l liberalism?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: You know, these are much deeper and more profound questions. And frankly, I think it's a little bit frightening that that's where the Trump era Republican Party finds itself right now.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Well, let's go back to how this started before we get to the more cataclysmic events of this week. After the election, before the election, during the election, Donald Trump is saying he's going to deny the results if he's not the winner.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: The second there are results, he's saying he did win. How does the GOP respond?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Yeah, I still remember late in the night of the election when Donald Trump stood up in that room in the White House. This is a fraud on the American public. This is an embarrassment to our country. We were getting ready to win this election. Frankly, we did win this election.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And the next morning, I remember kind of waiting for an avalanche of disapproval from Republicans on Capitol Hill because I kind of figured, you know, not that this would be any kind of moment of moral courage, just that it was a moment of reality.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Right. That all these Republicans who had felt like they needed to stand with Trump because that's what their voters wanted. And that was what was politically convenient. Now that they saw the writing on the wall that he was probably going to lose, that they were going to break with him.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And I kept waiting and waiting and waiting. And there were a couple early rumbles. You know, I think that Marco Rubio tweeted something vague about how all the votes are going to be counted and everybody should calm down.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: But I just kept waiting and it didn't happen. And after a day or two, you started to see these Republicans come out and say, well, look, the president has every right. To look into allegations of irregularities and weigh his legal options.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And that started to be the line percolating among Washington Republicans. It was President Trump's team is going to have a chance to make a case regarding voting irregularities. They deserve a chance to make that case.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I'm going to stand with President Trump. We certainly don't know who's won yet. The media does not get to select our president. The American people get to elect our president.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And so that was the initial response from most of the Republican Party. And it's important to note here that this is, even though a lot of the senior Republican leadership in the United States Senate are former colleagues, if not friends, of President-elect Joe Biden.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Right. Right. And a lot of them really like him. You know, Joe Biden's reputation when he was on Capitol Hill was as a dealmaker, as somebody who crossed the aisle and worked with Republicans.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And there's this famous video of Lindsey Graham from several years ago where he's giving an interview talking about how Joe Biden is such a good human being. The bottom line is if you can't admire Joe Biden as a person, then it's probably you've got a problem.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: You need to do some self-evaluation because what's not to like? And that video has gone viral every few months in the Trump era when Lindsey Graham says something outrageous about Joe Biden.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So, yeah, it's not that Republicans were, you know, terrified of a Biden presidency. And in fact, I bet if you talk to a lot of them in private off the record, a lot of them were probably relieved that Joe Biden was about to become president because they were sick and tired of all the hoops they had to jump through in the Trump era and being asked every day by reporters about the latest tweet or whatever.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So it wasn't that. It was just that they understood that Donald Trump had this grip on the majority of the Republican base, the majority of Republican voters that they didn't have. And that if they were seen now to be breaking with him, to be disloyal to him, they could face repercussions.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And so that's why I think you saw a lot of Republicans sort of starting to go along with this. But I think there was also this idea, and this is important to note, there was this idea in the early days of the election that this would be no big deal, that there was no harm in humoring him, right?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: That, look, he's probably going to lose. What's really the harm in going along with this kind of voter fraud narrative for a little while and letting him save face and showing his voters that we're still on the same team?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: You know, at the end of the day, he's going to leave office and it'll be no harm, no foul. And how does the tally of Republicans who are siding with the outgoing president change as the vast numbers of these legal challenges are rejected, if not mocked?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Yeah, I think that last word you said, I think, is key because there was a lot of frustration from Republicans that I heard from in the weeks following the election that the president's legal team was such a joke, right?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I mean, it was Rudy Giuliani and, you know, Eric Trump giving kind of ridiculous press conferences. The company counting our vote with control over our vote is owned by two Venezuelans who were allies of Chavez are present allies of Maduro with a company whose chairman is a close associate and business partner of George Soros
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: It was just very clear from the beginning that this was not going to be like a Bush v. Gore thing where both candidates had blue chip law firms and extremely well credentialed lawyers kind of going over case law and, you know, preparing their cases to bring to the Supreme Court.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: This was an ad hoc slapdash made for Fox News effort by the Trump campaign. And so I think once it became clear first that they were not going to have any real evidence of widespread voter fraud, not even like a little bit credible evidence of widespread voter fraud.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I think some Republicans started to back away. So as these cases started to be batted down in court, laughed out of court, Republican judges, in some cases, very curtly and candidly said these cases have no merit whatsoever.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: As that happened, you started to see people like Mitch McConnell and other Republicans acknowledge that this was not going to happen, that Donald Trump was not going to be president on January 20th, that Joe Biden had won the election.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: It still wasn't the consensus view among all Republicans, but there was kind of a breach in the wall around Donald Trump that started to happen, I would say, sometime in December.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And while that's happening, you start to see fissures in other arenas, in policy, right? As the year's ending, there's all this talk of stimulus, and then the president inserts himself and throws it off the rails.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I am asking Congress to amend this bill and increase the ridiculously low $600 to $2,000. There's talks of military spending and the president inserts himself and throws it off the rails.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: President Trump officially vetoed the National Defense Authorization Act for 2021. That's the roughly $800 billion spending bill that was coupled with the coronavirus relief to essentially make the relief bill a must pass.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And then there was a bipartisan vote to override that veto. And that that moment in isolation is not a big deal. You know, I think in Washington, military spending is one thing that Democrats and Republicans, for the most part, never want to touch.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: It's not crazy that there would be a bipartisan vote like that. But what it suggested was that a lot of Republicans were fed up with Donald Trump and were not quite as afraid of him as they might have been even a few months ago.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And just frankly, we're tired of dealing with the way that the White House was constantly derailing negotiations on Capitol Hill, constantly throwing a wrench in the business of legislating.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: The stimulus, I think, was a big moment where Trump had sent Steve Mnuchin to be kind of his representative for the administration in those negotiations.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And Republicans and Democrats had been dealing with Mnuchin for months in these stimulus talks. And they got to a point where there was consensus and nobody was really happy with what they had come up with.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: But, you know, that was kind of the nature of legislative compromise and they were ready to pass it. And then Donald Trump stood up out of nowhere and said that the checks weren't big enough.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: They should be $2,000 instead of $600 and immediately derailed the stimulus bill. And for a lot of Democrats and Republicans, but I think especially Republicans who are always looking for ways to give him the benefit of the doubt, it was just an extremely frustrating moment.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Where that laid the groundwork for a lot of Republicans to just, you know, sort of start to wash their hands. hands of him or in whatever way they could.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And it was amazing to see Republicans stand with him on claims of election fraud, but for these spending bills to be sort of the coup de grace. Like, no, you're not going to get us on stimulus or military spending.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: We'll let you maybe question the foundations of our democracy. But no, don't mess with our end of year spending bills.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Well, again, though, it goes back to this poisonous idea that was planted in the Republican establishment a long time ago, and especially in the days after the election, that there was no harm in humoring his conspiracy theories.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: There was no harm in letting Donald Trump save face. You know, I think for a lot of Republicans on Capitol Hill, the thinking was on this legislation, this concrete thing that we need to vote on, we're going to not allow Donald Trump to mess it up.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: But on these kind of wild ideas that are really aimed at social media and the conservative media and Newsmax and Fox News and all of that. Yeah, we can play along with that.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: You know, that's just kind of political theater and that's just our job, right? There's this very cynical idea that part of the job of a Republican legislator, especially in the Trump era, is to sort of go through the theater of, you know, being a MAGA die hard.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And that's just how you keep your seat and you can continue to do the work that you really want to do. And then the chickens come home to roost.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So let's talk about what happened this week. How was the establishment GOP responding to this effort to sort of have some sort of rally, some sort of protest in D.C. the day they'd be certifying the election results?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Most of the establishment Republican Party was pretty frustrated with what was happening. And it wasn't just that. It was also the fact that Josh Hawley, the senator from Missouri, Ted Cruz, senator from Texas, were cooking up this stunt to object to the electoral college votes from states that the president had lost.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I actually spent the days leading up to Wednesday talking to a bunch of Republican members in the House and the Senate. And these members ran the gamut from Mitt Romney, who is kind of often on the other side of an issue with Donald Trump and is one of the people who's constantly speaking out against him, to Thomas Massey, who is a libertarian Republican in the House of Representatives, staunch Trump supporter, is almost always in the MAGA camp.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And across that spectrum, a lot of Republicans were just completely outraged that there was this effort that they were going to have to deal with. And it's funny because I think part of it was, this is clearly anti-democratic.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: It makes the party look terrible. It's not going to work. We're just misleading voters. But there was also this just frustration that they were going to have to spend hours and hours debating this issue.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: You know, like so much of what angers members of Congress is when they just have to spend an entire day jumping through dumb parliamentary hoops for no reason. It's just like, it's like the same way that like I get annoyed when I have to file my expense reports.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: You know, it's like, it's just like, oh, like this annoying chore that I have to do. Right. Then you layered on top of that. The fact that Donald Trump was calling on his supporters to come to Washington to, you know, protest the certification of the Electoral College and in Donald Trump's convoluted thinking somehow changed the outcome.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: There's a very interesting moment I at least read about in the New York Times where while they're shutting down, Mitt Romney starts yelling at his colleagues. I mean, What is it like the moment the GOP and Democrats in the Senate realize, on some level, this plan was a success?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Yeah. The night before everything happened at the Capitol, I was on the phone with Mitt Romney. And he had actually just flown out to Washington. And his travel day had been kind of terrible.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: He was harassed by people in the airport. They didn't want you in there anyway. So to be honest with you, I wouldn't be surprised if you weren't even if you weren't even voted in legally. Trump is a juggernaut. Your legacy is nothing. You're a joke. Absolute joke. It's disgusting, Shane.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: He got on the plane and a group of passengers on the plane started chanting traitor Traitor Traitor Traitor Traitor But when I talked to him he was actually that interested in kind of venting about the people who were confronting him.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: His position was that President Trump had misled millions of people and convinced them that the election was stolen and that this frustration that they were seeing was because Republican voters were being lied to.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And he told me that in combustible moments like this one, this is the night before the storming of the Capitol, he said, in combustible moments like this one, you can either be a fire extinguisher or a flamethrower.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And President Trump has been a flamethrower. So he was kind of clear eyed about the fact that something was happening in the Republican base and that Donald Trump was inciting his supporters to do something bad.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Once the breach happened and it became clear to Capitol Police that they were not going to be able to hold the Capitol and they needed to get senators out of the chamber and into a secure facility.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: They started to kind of scramble to get everybody out. And in the midst of this chaos, Mitt Romney turned to Ted Cruz and yelled, this is what you've gotten.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And I actually was texting with somebody who worked for him in the middle of all this, just shortly after that episode to ask, because I had seen the reports of that and I asked, is this true?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And the person I talked to said yes and said, he is furious. That moment where the Capitol, in an unprecedented way, was being taken over by this angry mob, I think for a lot of them it sort of drove home just how dangerous, dangerous, not just the stolen election narrative was, but how dangerous so much of the Trump era has been.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: That you can't actually just lie to your supporters with abandon and tell them that all these terrible things are happening without eventually those people believing you and taking to the streets in response.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: You know, there is actually a cost to humoring President Trump. In a moment, yes, a bunch of members in the GOP saw the storming of the Capitol as the cost of humoring the president, but dozens of representatives and even a few senators got right back to feeding quarters into his manure machine.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Thank you. So much more. Chime says with qualifying direct deposits, you can be eligible for free overdraft up to $200 on debit card purchases and cash withdrawals.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Plus, they say you don't need to worry about monthly fees or maintenance fees. You can work on your financial goals through Chime today. You can open an account in two minutes at Chime.com slash explained.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: That's Chime.com slash explained. Chime feels like progress. Chime is a financial technology company, not a bank. Banking services and debit card provided by the Bank or Bank N.A. or Stride Bank N.A. Members FDIC.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Spot me eligibility requirements and overdraft limits apply. Timing depends on submission of payment file. Fees apply at out-of-network ATMs, bank ranking, and number of ATMs according to U.S. News and World Report 2023.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Time checking account required. on everything from wellness and soccer to culture, the climate, and more. Read, watch, and listen to The Guardian for free at theguardian.com.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Okay, McKay, a mob enters the Capitol. They desecrate the chambers. Tons of people are injured. Five people so far have died.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: When business resumes later that Wednesday night, One would think the president's party would have second thoughts about supporting his lies about the election.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I mean, you can't come up with something that would be better designed to force a reckoning over what these Republicans have been encouraging and the plan that Republicans have been pursuing.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Right. You just saw, you know, what happens when you go along with these crazy nonsense conspiracy theories and convince your voters that an election has been stolen.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And yet House reconvenes, the votes start and more than 100 Republicans in the House decide to object to electoral college votes from states that Donald Trump lost.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: These are the moments that we should raise the issue about integrity and accountability and accuracy in our elections. But you know what we should do the next difference? Not just raise the issue, but work together to solve the problems.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And was it a similar line in the Senate? It was, although I think what happened in the Senate was a little more interesting.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Because before the Capitol was stormed by this mob, what I had heard was that about a dozen Republicans in the Senate were going to vote to object. That number was cut in half by the time that business resumed late on Wednesday night.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And so, you know, still a lot of Republicans went along with it. And Ted Cruz made the same case that House Republicans were outlining.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: But for those who respect the voters, simply telling the voters, go jump in a lake, the fact that you have deep concerns is of no moment to us. That jeopardizes, I believe, the legitimacy of this and subsequent elections.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Very kind of Orwellian line of logic. But you also saw a lot of Republicans angrier at Donald Trump than I think they have ever been willing to show up to this point.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Right. I mean, Mitch McConnell. We will not be kept out of this chamber by thugs, mobs or threats.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: You saw Mitt Romney say that what happened here today was an insurrection incited by the president of the United States. And then get sustained applause from the chamber when he said that no congressional audit is ever going to convince these voters, particularly when the president will continue to say that the election was stolen.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: The best way we can show respect for the voters who are upset is by telling them the truth. You saw Lindsey Graham, who has been an extremely loyal supporter of Donald Trump's throughout his presidency, stand up and say, All I can say is count me out. Enough is enough.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I've tried to be helpful. And in very kind of Lindsey Graham fashion, you know, like very casual kind of. So Mike, Mr. Vice President, just hang in there. They said we can count on Mike. All of us can count on the vice president. You're going to do the right thing. You're going to do the constitutional thing.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Strange tone, frankly, given what it is. Like maybe he's drunk a little bit. There was definitely, I'm not going to say one way or the other, but drunk Lindsey Graham was trending on Twitter for a while.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: But that I thought was an interesting moment because, you know, again, these aren't moments of moral courage anymore.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: You know, like at this point, you don't get a lot of credit for breaking with Donald Trump after your life was just put at risk because he sent a mob to go storm your place of business.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: But you know at the same time I do think it was just a reflection of the realities in the Republican Party which was I think kind of a final breaking point for a lot of Republicans who had been trying their hardest to find ways to still be on his side while even trying to kind of tiptoe away from the crazier stuff he was saying.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: For a lot of Republicans, this was the moment where they just kind of threw up their hands and said, look, he's just wrong and he's lying and I'm just not going to be part of it anymore.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And we should mention here, the person presiding over all of this, the person sort of in charge of this legislative moment, is the vice president of the United States.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So, you know, we talked, I remember, back before the election about Mike Pence. Yeah. And, you know, I've spent a lot of time reporting on Mike Pence and kind of examining the various tensions that exist in Pence's decision to just fully support Donald Trump all the time.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: But that's what he's done. From the moment that Donald Trump put him on the ticket in 2016, he has been an unfailingly loyal, subservient, obedient deputy.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: When Donald Trump says jump, he says how high, right? He will do anything Donald Trump says. He will carry any water Donald Trump wants him to. He will defend anything Donald Trump does, no matter how brazenly corrupt or out of keeping with Mike Pence's values as an evangelical Christian.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: This is just who Pence is. And for that unfailing years of loyalty, Donald Trump rewarded him by putting him in an impossible position.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: All Vice President Pence has to do is send it back to the states to recertify. And we become president and you are the happiest people. Just to be clear, he does not have that authority.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: There is no constitutional authority for the vice president to change the outcome of a presidential election. But Donald Trump literally up until Wednesday, on Wednesday morning, continued to tell the MAGA base that Mike Pence had that ability.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And if he doesn't, that will be a sad day for our country. He either does the only thing he actually can do, which is to just count the electoral college votes and certify the election, which would lead to a massive backlash from the Republican base.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Or he can basically recuse himself or try some kind of antics that would never actually work that would end his political career but somehow retain the blessing of Donald Trump.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Anyway, what he ended up doing was sending a three-page letter saying that he had looked into it. I'm sorry, I shouldn't be laughing. He said, I mean, it's just so ridiculous. But he said he had carefully considered it and determined that he did not have the constitutional authority to send the Electoral College votes back.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And Donald Trump immediately turned on him. I'm going to be very disappointed in you, I will tell you right now. I'm not hearing good stories.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Throws him under the bus. Throws him completely under the bus. It basically set up Mike Pence as the fall guy.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Said that Mike Pence didn't have the courage to do what needed to be done. That because of Mike Pence, we're not going to win this election.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Basically made, turned Mike Pence overnight into one of the biggest villains in conservative America.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Immediately memes started to circulate. conspiracy theories started to circulate in conservative social media circles, that he had been compromised, that Mike Pence was, you know, working with the deep state, that, you know, he was never loyal to Donald Trump.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Basically, on the way out the door, Donald Trump torched Mike Pence's credibility and ended his ability, I think, to have a future in Republican politics. At least that's what it looks like now.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Okay. I guess this all brings us to the question, you know, we wanted to ask you, which is, you know, if people thought they were going to get a reckoning in the Republican Party after Trump won the election, you know, they didn't.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: If they thought they were going to get one after the GOP lost the House, they didn't. If they thought they'd get one after President Trump lost the election in November, they didn't.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: But if they thought they were going to get one after the outgoing president incited a quasi-insurrection in the Capitol the day of the certification of his opponent's win, are they going to get it?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I actually think yes. I don't know what the reckoning will look like. And it's possible that the eventual result will be an even more kind of undemocratic, demagogic party.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: But I do think that after what happened in Washington combined, and this is important, combined with the fact that Republicans in the midst of all this officially lost control of the Senate.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Both Georgia runoffs went to the Democrats, which means that Republicans now are completely out of power. They have lost control of the White House and both chambers of Congress and are now in the wilderness.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And there was this kind of line of argument in the immediate aftermath of the November election that even among those who acknowledged that Donald Trump had lost, there was this idea that, yeah, but Republicans actually did pretty well down ballot and overperformed with certain segments of minority voters.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And, you know, there are actually positive signs to look at in all of this. And there was a sense that Republicans were at least going to be able to have control of the Senate so they would be able to block a lot of the legislation that the Biden administration was pushing for.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So there were a lot of silver linings in November that Republicans were looking at that don't exist now.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And for the Trump presidency to end with an angry, violent armed mob storming the Capitol, putting Republican members' lives at risk, I think for a lot of Republicans, will finally cause the introspection and the kind of infighting that probably should have started months ago.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I'm not going to make any predictions about where that infighting and introspection leads. There is definitely a faction of the Republican Party that believes the answer, the solution to their ills is more Donald Trump, more Trumpism, more Trump style populism, quote unquote.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And that faction of the party is powerful and they are going to continue to make that case regardless of what happened this week in Washington.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And then there will be other factions of the party who are arguing for a return to Reaganism. There will be factions of the party who argue for moderation. There will be some that argue that they need to get back to very conservative economic politics, that spending in Washington has gotten out of control.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: That'll be a convenient rediscovery in the Biden era of austerity politics. So you're going to see a lot of debate within the Republican Party now, I think, about where they're headed.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And I don't know where it's going, but the debate has, I think, finally started.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: McKay Coppins is a staff writer at The Atlantic. You can find and support his work at theatlantic.com.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Since we spoke, Democrats in Congress have said they would move to impeach the outgoing president again as soon as next week if he didn't resign immediately.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Representative Kevin McCarthy of California, a Republican who you briefly heard in this episode, has said impeaching the president with only a few days left in his term would only divide the country more.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Two thirds of the Senate would be necessary to convict. And as of publishing time, all of one senator, Ben Sasse of Nebraska, has said he'd even consider impeachment over this week's events.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I'm Sean Rameswaram. This is Today Explained. Thank you.
