“But if Republicans go along with impeachment, it will destroy the party. A third of Republicans will leave the party.” — Rand Paul, Kentucky senator

“President Trump has talked in recent days with associates about forming a new political party, according to people familiar with the matter... The president said he would want to call the new party the ‘Patriot Party,’ the people said — Wall Street Journal

“If Republicans don't challenge and change the U.S. election system, there will never be another Republican president elected again.” — Lindsey Graham, South Carolina senator

Republicans know they’re in the minority, but they fear something far worse: An exodus by QAnon conspiracy theorists and white supremacists that will leave their party so crippled it can’t compete on the national stage.

The GOP establishment and Donald Trump’s extremist minions joined forces because they needed each other. George W. Bush tried to broaden the party’s appeal with his “compassionate conservatism,” but that once-promising experiment ran aground on the rocks of the Great Recession.

They tried to focus on their integrity by nominating men of honor like John McCain and Mitt Romney. But the working class didn’t buy it. They distrusted the party’s fealty to its political puppet masters: corporate donors and lobbyists. McCain, to his credit, was coauthor of a bipartisan attempt to rein in campaign-finance corruption. He actually got the legislation passed, only to see it struck down by the Supreme Court (in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission).

Working-class split

In 2016, that working class fractured in two: In urban America, they gravitated toward Bernie Sanders’ Democratic Socialism, hoping the Vermont senator could play the role of a new FDR: that he could level the playing field by bringing the corporate 1 percenters to their knees. In rural America, they found a champion in Trump, who pandered to their fears about immigrants and gun control, and promised to appoint judges who would overturn Roe v. Wade.

Sanders lost the nomination to Hillary Clinton, while Trump won — not just on the Republican side, but the whole kit and kaboodle. The reasons for this are many, but perhaps the most compelling: While Sanders’ message went to the heart of the matter, economic hardship, Trump instead targeted his audience’s he raw emotion. He didn’t have answers, but he shared their grievance, which was what they wanted most.

The rural and urban working classes shared the same economic peril, but instead of uniting them in common cause, Trump turned them against each other, directing rural working-class rage toward “urban elites,” diverse inner cities, and immigrant “caravans” who threatened “the American way.” This was all code for racist scapegoating, and it served two purposes:

First, it distracted from the real economic problem, which Trump knew he couldn’t solve. It would have been a major challenge for any president, but Trump had never been a problem-solver. (Witness his absurd belief that COVID-19 would magically disappear, as though in deference to his greatness.) He knew his strength lay elsewhere: in marketing. So he focused on that.

Second, the emotional tenor of his message bound his supporters to him in a way few politicians before him had succeeded in doing. They might have been in the minority, but they made up for that with the intensity of their devotion, something that fed Trump’s outsize ego and insulated him from the consequences of his most outlandish actions.

Fractured fairy tale

It’s that emotion, weaponized in the form of normalized racism and entitlement, that has put the Republican Party in its current untenable position. Having abandoned its big-tent aspirations for Trump’s base-focused strategy, it can’t afford to see that base fracture into two camps: the old corporate establishment and the populists — the never-say-die Trump extremists.

That fracture is real, and it poses an existential threat to the Republican Party.

A report emerged in the waning hours of Trump’s presidency, that he was thinking about forming a new Patriot Party (a name, ironically, once used by a minor socialist party in the 1960s and ’70s).

How credible is that report? To use one of Trump’s favorite phrases, “we’ll see.” In his farewell address, Trump said, “We will be back in some form,” and promised his followers, “We will see you soon.”

Whatever that means, a Trumpist party is certainly conceivable. Trump has never had any qualms about threatening or undermining the party he was supposed to be leading. In fact, that’s how he kept the party in line. He likely cost Republicans control of the Senate with his unfounded claims of voter fraud in Georgia, and four years earlier, during his first campaign for president, he threatened to run as an independent if Republicans didn’t nominate him.

That’s what he appears to threatening again now, but this time, he’s got a cadre of loyal lawmakers, held in thrall by Trumpist constituents, in his pocket. Would these lawmakers bolt the party for Trump’s new party if he were to form one? Given their — and their constituents’ — unflinching loyalty in deep-red (or deep-Trump) gerrymandered districts, they might feel as if they had no choice.

Possible futures

Imagine what would happen if even half the 147 House Republicans who voted against certifying Joe Biden’s victory became “Patriots” instead of Republicans? Presumably far fewer senators would do so, being less vulnerable to pressure from Trump because their terms are longer and state lines can’t be gerrymandered.

Would Patriots and Republicans caucus together for the purpose of advancing common goals, or would Trump’s penchant for divisiveness and vindictiveness prevent them from doing so? That’s an open question.

But the result could be that the Republican establishment becomes what’s called a rump party: those who stayed behind in the aftermath of a political insurrection.

In the short run, that could be disastrous for Republicans, but in the long run, it could present them with a golden opportunity. The nation has long been clamoring for a centrist party, and if the Republicans purged themselves of the radical Trumpists, they could position themselves to fill that role. They’d have the branding, the infrastructure, and the funding that previous wannabe centrist groups (such as Ross Perot’s Reform Party) lacked.

Of course, the other possibility is that Republicans cave to Trump yet again, and embrace the extremist identity he’s carved out for them. But that would likely condemn them to the status they most fear: in a perpetual minority that mirrors Trump’s approval ratings over the past four years.

Unless, of course, they make even greater strides at voter suppression or launch another insurrection.

Whatever happens, it won’t be pretty for the Republicans, or the rest of us.

Stephen H. Provost is a former journalist and author of three books about the Trump presidency, available on Amazon at www.amazon.com/gp/product/B08RC7L8X1.