🌊 Republican Civil War Begins

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Despite the Republicans’ landslide victory last week – which gave them control of the White House and both chambers of Congress – the party remains fiercely divided. 

On the one side is “MAGA,” Trump’s self-proclaimed “right flank,” which seeks to curb the Washington moderates and institute populist policies it says will return power to the people. On the other is the “establishment,” which is led by traditional, more moderate Republican politicians.

This morning, the battle between these factions came to a head in the United States Senate.

The Senate has long been relatively “conservative,” not necessarily in the political sense, but philosophically. Modeled after Britain’s House of Lords – an aristocratic institution whose members were hereditary or appointed – the founders intended for it to promote stability and keep the directly elected House of Representatives in check. It wasn’t until 1913 that US senators were even directly elected. 

That conservative ethos holds today. Part of it is tradition, but also with six-year terms, senators are less vulnerable to short-term political pressures and threats of being primaried. Senators also hold statewide office, meaning they represent more people of the opposite party than House members who often represent one-sided districts. That’s led Senate Republicans to be more moderate than their counterparts in the House and elsewhere. But one man’s moderation is another’s appeasement, and that’s how MAGA sees it.

While Congress and the legislative branch are independent of the executive branch, many Trump supporters are arguing that Trump’s victory gives him a mandate to move his agenda through Congress. Those who may block the agenda, i.e. the moderate Republican senators, are obstructing the will of the people, they say.

And no one has more power to block the agenda than the Senate majority leader, who controls nomination hearings, which legislation is prioritized, campaign funding, committee appointments, and more. A MAGA-aligned Senate majority leader would ensure that Trump’s appointments quickly made it through; a moderate may slow those appointments, block the more controversial ones, and slow the passage of some legislation.

Thus emerged the first fight of the Republican civil war: The battle to control the Senate, Trump’s appointments, and legislation in the years ahead.

Editor’s Note

We have been reading your feedback to this weekend’s article and can’t thank you enough. We’ll try to reply to all of you once we have the chance. We are so honored to have your trust as we continue our mission of bringing honest and unbiased news to America. Thank you for your support. We do not take it for granted. 

Also, we are currently discussing this situation and Trump’s appointment picks live on our YouTube here!

–Max and Max

RocaNews co-founders