GOP being 'eaten alive from within' by Trump: 'The party is fractured'

A parade of Republican leaders and lawmakers have paid visits to former president Donald Trump at his Mar-A-Lago resort since he left the White House, further entrenching him as the leader of an increasingly fractured party.

The Republican National Committee, which has spent nearly $300,000 at Mar-A-Lago since 2018, is moving its annual spring retreat dinner to the club to better accommodate Trump, the event's headline speaker, but there are concerns among conservatives whether the former president should be its 2024 nominee, reported USA Today.

"The majority of the party is with him," said GOP strategist and podcast host Gianno Caldwell. "It's unquestionable at this point that they are absolutely with him."

But he pointed to a straw poll taken at the Conservative Political Action Conference last month that found 97 percent approval for Trump's performance as president, but only 55 percent said they would support him again if he ran in 2024.

"The party is fractured," Caldwell said, "so it's going to be very difficult to unite the party in a way which is cohesive for legitimate forward movement."

Caldwell said conservatives are in a tough spot because the public blames Trump for the Jan. 6 insurrection, and Republican leadership is unable to stand up to the former president who enjoys great popularity within the GOP but not the electorate at large.

"Conservatives are legitimately getting beat up everywhere," he said. "This is a really, really rough place to be because there is also a lack of leadership in the GOP right now."

Trump tried to assert his control by demanding the RNC and the National Republican Senatorial Committee stop using his name and likeness on fundraising materials and urged supporters to donate directly to him.

"The Republican Party is being eaten alive from within by this," said Spencer Critchley, a former presidential campaign adviser to Barack Obama. "He is doing all this stuff that only serves his own impulsive interest of the moment and the Republican Party seems helpless to do anything but go along with it, even though he is attacking one of the things they presumably care most about, their ability to raise money."