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The Battle for the GOP
Can the Republican Party rein in the conspiracies? Here’s what its history says
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Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell took the floor after Donald Trump was acquitted in his second impeachment trial and denounced the wild and unfounded claims of “a stolen election” spouted by the former president and the US Capitol rioters who scaled walls, shattered windows, and trashed congressional offices.
This widening ideological rift is the story of today’s GOP, but it is much older than that. For as long as there has been a Republican Party, it has had a conspiratorial strain. Often, it has flowed on currents of conservative populism, racism, fear of Black racial progress, and resentment over a dwindling white middle class, historians and political analysts said. Yet, history provides no real playbook for McConnell and other Republican leaders to stem the tide as they battle with rank-and-file members over the party’s direction.
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Economic hardship and anxiety have accelerated the Republican Party’s radicalization, experts say
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