<p>Carpenter explains, "It's confusing — not to mention utterly disingenuous and totally boneheaded — that a memo written to declare the 'cancelation' of internal GOP debate simultaneously shrieks about liberal cancel culture leading to the silencing of GOP voices…. All that Scott really cares about — and all that the CPAC honchos and everyone else seeking to hold their positions at the top of the slippery Republican pole care about — is keeping the Trump flag waving."</p><iframe src="https://platform.twitter.com/embed/Tweet.html?dnt=false&embedId=twitter-widget-0&frame=false&hideCard=false&hideThread=false&id=1364563850520129537&lang=en&origin=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.alternet.org%2Fr%2Fentryeditor%2F2650739524%23publish&partner=rebelmouse&theme=light&widgetsVersion=889aa01%3A1612811843556&width=550px" style="position: static; visibility: visible; width: 405px; height: 577px; flex-grow: 1;" title="Twitter Tweet"></iframe><p>Republicans who have been facing vehement condemnation from pro-Trump Republicans for favoring Trump's recent impeachment include Sen. Mitt Romney of Utah, Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming and Sen. Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania. Toomey isn't seeking reelection in 2022, while Cheney is facing an aggressive GOP primary challenge.<br/></p><p>According to Carpenter, Republicans who refuse to surrender to Trumpism need to think long and hard about where they go from here.</p><p>"The institutional GOP is saying any anti-Trumpspeak is unwanted. Canceled," Carpenter laments. "The few Republicans who dared to vote to impeach and convict Trump are being censured and primaried. At the national, state, and local levels, the GOP could not be more inhospitable to Trump-skeptical figures. Realistically, Republican officials are giving the people who can't stomach Trumpism no choice but to explore their options. What choices do they have? They could call it quits and leave politics, as Paul Ryan, Bob Corker, Jeff Flake, and others have done."</p><p>Carpenter goes on to lay out some other possible options for non-Trumpian Republicans.</p><p>"They could band together and forge an intraparty faction, pledging to withhold their support unless certain conditions are met, such as an acknowledgment that the 2020 election wasn't stolen and a commitment that voting restrictions based on Trump's big election lie not be enacted," Carpenter notes. "They could form a third party with the aim of displacing Trump-endorsed candidates."</p><p>The last thing that non-Trumpian Republicans should do, according to Carpenter, is cave in, embrace Trumpism and go along to get along.</p><p>"They could simply do what millions of Americans did in the 2020 election and choose to align with moderate Democrats so long as the leadership of the GOP remains under Trump's thumb," Carpenter argues. "None of these options is guaranteed of success. Any of them is better than surrender."</p>
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