As the dust settles from recent violence at the U.S. Capitol and the new Biden administration calls for unity, the Republican party faces an uncertain future. A Pew Research Center poll released this week indicated that approximately 33 percent of Republicans now accept that the party’s future does not lie with Donald Trump — and that’s good news, according to Peter Kadzis, GBH News senior editor. He joined Adam Reilly, GBH News political reporter and his The Scrum podcast co-host on GBH's Morning Edition with host Joe Mathieu today to discuss how the country moves forward after Wednesday's historic inauguration.
Before either party can look to the long term, they both face an impending short term challenge: the impeachment trial of the former president, who is charged with inciting the Capitol riot on January 6. The article of impeachment is expected to reach the Senate on Monday. While a central theme of President Biden’s inaugural address on Wednesday focused on the need for healing and unity, how does that square with a potentially divisive trial for a former president?
“It’s intellectually hard to get your mind around,” Kadzis said about the upcoming trial. “Of course, the purpose of impeachment is to allow the Senate to decide by a simple majority that Donald Trump would be barred from holding office in the future. This is something that they [Democrats] should go for. Trump is the menace.”
As a counterpoint to those who see impeachment as a barrier to unity, Reilly asked: “How can you not move ahead with impeachment when the just-exited ex-president called, essentially, for a violent insurrection to keep him in power? It was such a grotesque deviation from established American political norms. If you let it slide, you pave the way for repeats in the future. I don’t think Americans want political violence to become a regular feature of our civic life.”
Instead of focusing solely on unity as a political goal, Kadzis offered a more practical approach for the Biden administration: “Unity is elusive and, I think, will be impossible to achieve,” he said. “What is possible is something more commonsensical, which is common ground — being able to stand on the same patch of ground, as in the Capitol building, together.”
Biden has already centered his early days in office on the federal response to the coronavirus pandemic. “The key to achieving common ground is, first of all, administrative competence,” Kadzis said. “Biden is off to a good start, because the biggest challenge the nation faces is the pandemic.”
As for Republicans, Reilly said the tide seems to be shifting around impeachment, and there might even be some unity around it as former majority leader Mitch McConnell has publicly criticized Trump. “Republicans in the Senate, like politicians everywhere, are creatures of rational self interest,” he said. “If they perceive the [former] president as dragging down the Republican brand in the future, and dragging down their prospects, they’re going to be interested in finding a way to marginalize him.”
Watch: Reilly on why impeachment is important.
While the next few weeks will be pivotal for both Democrats and Republicans, Kadzis urged them to start thinking about the future. “Everyone in Washington needs to be looking ahead to the elections in two years,” he said, pointing out that Democrats have a very small majority in both the House and Senate. “It’s a very fluid situation.”
