In a column for the conservative Bulwark, RealClearPolitics editor A.B. Stoddard suggested that Donald Trump is giving every indication that he wants to destroy the Republican Party as he exits the Oval Office, with an eye of taking the weakened GOP over to serve both his ego and his financial needs.
With the clock ticking on Trump's last few days as president, he has taken to attacking Republican officials who refuse to back his flailing attempts to overturn the election as well as going after GOP lawmakers who are failing his loyalty litmus test by acknowledging former Vice President Joe Biden is now the president-elect as this tweet shows:
Case in point for the president's war, Stoddard writes, is how the president is turning the "Stop the steal" movement against fellow Republicans.
"Angry and afraid people fighting—over him—is the very top of his hierarchy of needs. It’s his version of self-actualization. And while he may be forced to give up the office of the presidency, he will not give up being at the center of this storm. Republicans don’t seem capable of understanding where this eventually leads. So let me spell it out for them: Donald Trump is going to destroy their party," she wrote.
The columnist stated that Republicans are whistling past the graveyard if they think Trump and his family won't come back to haunt them now that the president has shown he can still raise hundreds of millions of dollars for his own use after losing the most expensive presidential campaign in American history.
"It’s amusing to watch conventional Republicans try to cling to the idea that Trumpism is about policy, or ideology, or something other than Donald Trump and his attitude,'" she wrote. "These people were happy to be complicit in Trumpism so long as they got their judges and nobody demanded that they break the law on Trump’s behalf. Now some of them find themselves up against the wall while guys like Ted Cruz look on nervously hoping that they can act butch enough that Trump won’t demand a loyalty test of them the way he has of [Gov. Brian] Kemp (R-GA) and [Gov. Doug] Ducey (R-AZ)."
Writing, "What Mitch McConnell and company don’t seem to understand is that this is the endgame: The MAGA cult no longer sees Democrats and the media as Enemy Number One. The Republicans who aren’t legally permitted to deny reality are now the big threat. And Trump is going to spend the next two—or four—years at war them," Stoddard added a warning of what is likely to come.
"What awaits Trump, after the season of election fraud TV ends on January 20, is serious legal exposure. He will make sure the GOP pays a price at each twist and turn of his coming prosecutions for various and sundry crimes. From obstruction of justice, to tax fraud, and so much more. Trump’s legal morass will be a chronic story in the years to come. Republicans will be asked to comment on each sordid discovery and ruling, and anyone unwilling to zealously defy the facts and fight back will be punished," she explained before making a dire prediction for GOP lawmakers.
"Republicans will have to soon accept Trump isn’t actually trying to be president again, or lead or unite a party. He simply intends to dominate and there is never enough submission. The next few years for Trump will be all about scalps," she warned before bluntly adding, "Republican scalps."
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