By Todd Lassa

If there was any chance that the January 6 insurrection on Capitol Hill by a pro-Trump mob would clarify the future of the Republican Party, such hopes have been smashed against the temporary gates erected around the Capitol since the inauguration. 

After the attacks, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-CA,  at first said the soon-to-be-ex-president “bears responsibility for the attack on Congress by mob rioters.”

But in late January, McCarthy flew to the Office of the Former President at Florida’s Mar-a-Lago, where Trump promised to stump for GOP candidates in the 2022 midterms who have been loyal toward him and help mount primary campaigns against those who have not.

Some Republican leaders are threatening impeachment of Liz Cheney, R-WY, for her January 13 vote in favor of Trump’s second impeachment. And while Democrats on Wednesday threatened removal from her committee assignments of controversial freshman Rep. Marjorie Taylor-Greene, R-GA, after Republicans declined to do so themselves, Republicans have countered by threatening to strip Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-MN, of her committee assignments because of “past inflammatory statements,” Fox News reports. Greene, who has been associated with QAnon and with social media threats against “The Squad,” including Omar, Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-NY, and Rashida Tlaib, D-MI as well as House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, told Fox News last August that she has “moved on” from QAnon, the cable news outlet reports.

And so it goes. 

Both sides of the GOP schism can count early victories in fundraising, Politico reports. Trump’s new leadership PAC, Save America, had raised $31.2 million by the end of 2020. Trump can’t use the cash to support any future campaign of his own, but he can use it to influence 2022 midterm campaigns, according to Politico. Meanwhile, the political news site says, Defending Democracy Together, which includes the groups, Republicans for the Rule of Law and Republican Voters Against Trump, has a $50-million ‘war chest’ for GOP incumbents to fight off primary challengers. 

As we approach the week of the former impeachment trial in the Senate, the Lincoln Project has introduced billboards calling on Sens. Ted Cruz, R-TX, and Josh Hawley, R-MO, for supporting Trump in his call for the Senate to reject the Electoral College vote favoring Biden. While Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell told fellow Republicans he would not “whip” them to vote against convicting Trump of “incitement to insurrection,” he voted with the majority of his party against proceeding with the trial.

Just five Republicans voted with 50 Democrats in favor of proceeding with the trial, and a week later, 10 Republicans met with Biden at the White House to discuss a compromise on competing coronavirus relief bills. There is scant chance Democrats will convince 17 Republicans to reach the 2/3 majority needed for conviction, thus eliminating the prospects of following up with a separate, simple majority vote to bar Trump from running for any federal office again. 

Which brings us full-circle to the question of the future of the GOP. The Lincoln Project, founded in 2016 by a group of traditional Republican “Never-Trumpers” are complemented by such online publications as The Dispatch, and The Bulwark, the latter a website founded by former editors at intellectual conservative icon William F. Buckley, Jr.’s National Review after it pivoted toward Trump early in his administration.

What happens to Defending Democracy Together, Republicans for the Rule of Law, Republican Voters Against Trump and the Lincoln Project if Trump maintains his stranglehold on the modern GOP? If “traditional” Republicans like McConnell find they can’t give up their fealty to Trump, where do such Republicans as Rep. Cheney go? 

The answer, and the underlying implication of the formation of these groups, is a third party, spearheaded by those groups. This would be a bloodbath for two right-leaning parties, of course, potentially handing the Democrats a good deal of power in the next four years. Ex-President Trump has intimated he’d take his followers and launch a Patriot party, if he had to, but lately, that doesn’t seem necessary. As of this writing, it’s the never-Trump organizations that will have to break off into a new party.

For this debate post, The Hustings asked right-columnists Andrew Boyd and Bryan Williams, pundit-at-large Stephen Macaulay and left-columnist Jim McCraw to weigh in on whether, say, a “Lincoln Party” might be good for modern conservatism, and for the country.