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When pressed, Ms. McDaniel said that some G.O.P. resolutions and statements needed to be disavowed, citing Oregons false flag resolution. I know our state party chairs are doing the best they can to represent their voters, but that statement goes too far, she said.

And she expressed regret about letting Rudolph W. Giuliani, the former presidents personal lawyer and the former mayor of New York, and Sidney Powell, another member of Mr. Trumps legal team who spread conspiracy theories, hold a news conference at the R.N.C. headquarters in Washington.

When I saw some of the things Sidney was saying, without proof, I certainly was concerned it was happening in my building, she said. There are a whole host of issues we had to deal with what is the liability of the R.N.C., if these allegations are made and unfounded?

Despite the attempts of Ms. McDaniel, who remains closely allied to Mr. Trump, to bring the party together, many lifelong Republicans feel that there is no place for them in it.

In Washington State, Chris Vance had for years dedicated himself to the Republican movement as both a politician and as the party chairman. But in 2016, when he ran unsuccessfully for Senate, he found himself in conflict with many Republican voters in his state, who disagreed on issues including trade agreements, immigration and the role of NATO. That disconnect has only grown over the past four years, he said.

They are intent on being a Trump cheering society, said Mr. Vance, who has since left the party. I dont think the party can be saved. I think it needs to be broken up, smashed and blown to bits.

Some Republican strategists said that when Democrats in Congress began trying to pass legislation, it would become easier for Republicans to remember they are on the same team.

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An Emboldened Extremist Wing Flexes Its Power in a Leaderless G.O.P. - The New York Times

KYLE, Texas A conservative-backed group is calling for Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) to resign and they're using billboards to do it.

One of them was recently spotted here in Central Texas in Kyle off of Interstate 35.

The group is targeting members of Congress who they believe played a role in the riot at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6. They say they want to unseat lawmakers who tried to overturn the election.

The Republican Accountability Project is far from the first to call on Cruz's resignation. Multiple political action committees and lawmakers have made similar calls, and numerous petitions have also been created, calling for him to give up his seat.

The senator has declined any wrongdoing in his stance on President Joe Biden's win and has said he has no intention of heeding their calls.

Not remotely, he said in January after being asked if he assumed any blame for the riots. What I was doing and what the other senators were doing is what we were elected to do, which is debating matters of great import in the chamber of the United States Senate. I joined with 11 other Senators and we proposed to the Senate that Congress should appoint an electoral commission.

Originally posted here:
Republican-backed group calls on Sen. Ted Cruz to resign with billboards - WWLTV.com

The backlash has turned their 2022 primaries into tests of how long Trump can hold the stage in Republican politics and whether GOP voters are willing to turn the midterms into tests of loyalty to him.

"It started out big and it's still growing. People are angry," said Bryan Miller, the Republican chairman in Wyoming's Sheridan County who said he plans to run against Cheney in the party's 2022 primary. "She's not living up to what we in Wyoming wanted, across the board. And it's a huge betrayal."

Anthony Bouchard, a Wyoming state senator who is also running against Cheney, said he's been "flooded" with messages encouraging a primary run.

"I believe that her impeachment vote revealed who she has allegiance to, and I don't think the voters will forget it any time soon," Bouchard said.

The early seeds of primary trouble for House Republicans who voted to impeach Trump is an illustration of how much loyalty the former President retains within his party, weeks after he departed office and was removed from his favorite social media platforms.

Whether the anger against those 10 lawmakers will survive the next year is far from clear, with congressional districts' makeup certain to shift as states complete the once-a-decade process of redrawing district lines and more than a year for the anger to dissipate and the GOP's focus to move past Trump.

"Each and every one of those 10, when they made that vote, they knew in their heads and in their hearts it was probably a political death sentence. They knew that," said former Rep. Joe Walsh, the conservative Illinois Republican whose 2020 primary against Trump did not gain traction.

He said any establishment donor money that goes to support those 10 GOP lawmakers will be "dwarfed" by money aimed at ousting them.

"I wouldn't be surprised to see a number of them not even run again, depending on how their districts shake out" after redistricting, Walsh said.

Trump has been showing allies a poll of Wyoming voters commissioned by his super PAC and conducted by Trump's longtime pollster John McLaughlin to make the case that Cheney's vote on impeachment is not popular among Republicans there, a source told CNN. His super PAC also issued a news release highlighting the poll.

Donald Trump Jr. called into Gaetz's event and said Cheney should be ousted in next year's primary.

"It's time to have a change at the top. It's time to have people that are going to start representing the people -- not their own agendas, not their own nonsense, but their constituency," he said. "And since the people of Wyoming are clearly not thrilled with Liz Cheney, let's find someone who can replace her and actually do that job well."

The Republicans who voted to impeach Trump have all defended their votes by saying they were a matter of principle after Trump encouraged attendees at a January 6 rally to march on the US Capitol -- which led to the deadly riot that afternoon.

Amid the complications of primary challenges against House Republicans who voted to impeach Trump is the potential that -- like in Wyoming -- multiple candidates could enter primaries, fracturing the opposition to vulnerable Republican incumbents.

Still, the impeachment vote has led some state and local parties, as well as major donors, to say that they are dropping their support for those Republicans -- for good.

In Washington, the state's Republican Central Committee passed a resolution condemning Trump's impeachment "without question or exception" and expressing disappointment at Reps. Dan Newhouse and Jaime Herrera Beutler, two of the 10 Republicans who voted in favor of impeachment.

The Clark County Republican Women's Group sent a letter to Herrera Beutler explicitly saying it would recruit and back a primary challenger.

The letter said that "this vote will never be forgotten, as your action is a personal affront to the 70 million plus Americans who voted for our President."

In Michigan, the Allegan County Republican Party censured Rep. Fred Upton for his vote, saying that he "betrayed oath of office and core values" of the county party.

Tom Norton, the third-place finisher in a 2020 primary won by Rep. Peter Meijer in western Michigan, said he is running again and appeared on former Trump adviser Steve Bannon's podcast two weeks ago.

Gene Koprowski -- who launched a primary bid against Illinois Rep. Adam Kinzinger, one of the GOP's most outspoken Trump critics -- named the campaign committee he created on January 14 "Impeach Adam Kinzinger 2022."

The "issues" page on the website launched by former Fresno city councilman Chris Mathys, who says he'll take on Rep. David Valadao in California, contains just three sentences, all targeting Valadao's impeachment vote: "President Trump has fought in our behalf to protect our conservative republican values. It is unbelievable that congressman David Valadao would for the impeachment of President Donald Trump. I will do everything to restore our conservative values as a conservative republican."

Ken Richardson, the chairman of the school board in South Carolina's Horry County, said he'd long thought he might run for Rice's 7th Congressional District years down the road.

"I didn't know that Tom was going to shoot himself in the foot. But he's done that," Richardson said. "To say I'm getting calls would be an understatement."

He called Rice "a nice guy" and noted that Rice had been to barbecues at his house.

"But the county that we live in right now -- 71% of the people voted for Donald Trump. And if you're the congressman for this area, you've got to understand, that's not Tom Rice's seat and it's not Ken Richardson's seat. That seat belongs to the people," Richardson said.

Those considering primary runs said they have already heard from major Republican donors -- and are convinced that GOP primary voters' anger toward those who voted to impeach Trump will ease before the 2022 primaries.

"I do not think this is going to dissipate," Miller said.

Richardson said: "There's no doubt in my mind it's going to last way past the election."

This story has been updated Saturday with additional reporting.

CNN's Kaitlan Collins and David Wright contributed to this story.

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'People are angry': House Republicans who voted to impeach Trump face backlash at home - CNN

It feels like were living in the upside-down world, she said. Ocker feels that RINOs betrayed the president and wrongly blamed him for the riots, and she added that it was impossible that any Trump supporter could have committed violence that day.

Weve all been living a lie and been told a lie, she said.

She hasnt spoken with her parents, who are Biden supporters, since the election. They see her as a QAnon conspiracy theorist, she said, but she thinks of herself as a skeptic who does her own research. Now, she fears a civil war or, at the least, a generation-long rebuilding of conservative politics.

A partys got to implode, she said. I think thats whats happening to the Republican Party, a little bit.

Others are taking a pragmatic approach: Where will they be able to influence politics the most as Colorado stays blue?

Ive gotta tell you, the vast majority of my friends are laughing at me, that I switched over to Democrat. They think Im crazy, said Martin Lee Hussman, 45.

A well-connected resident of Alamosa, he was previously a registered Libertarian but voted for Trump in the most recent election. And as he watched the fallout of the riots, he decided that Democrats would hold power for the foreseeable future.

Honestly, I think the Republican Party is dead. I dont think theres going to be a Republican Party in the next couple years, said Hussman, a plumber.

Hussman figured that being registered as a Democrat would help him moderate the partys candidates. He plans to support people like Don Valdez, the Democrat who represents the area in the state House and has broken with his party on gun restrictions. But Hussman didnt feel very different after filling out the form.

Aw, hell, Hussman said. Its easy to switch back to something else if I dont like the way this ones going.

Denverite's Kevin J. Beaty performed the data analysis for this story.

Editor's Note: This story was updated to reflect the correct number of former Republicans who became unaffiliated.

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4600 Colorado Republicans Quit The Party After The US Capitol Insurrection - Colorado Public Radio

More than 30,000 voters who had been registered members of the Republican Party have changed their voter registration in the weeks after a mob of pro-Trump supporters attacked the Capitol an issue that led the House to impeach the former president for inciting the violence.

The massive wave of defections is a virtually unprecedented exodus that could spell trouble for a party that is trying to find its way after losing the presidential race and the Senate majority.

It could also represent the tip of a much larger iceberg: The 30,000 who have left the Republican Party reside in just a few states that report voter registration data, and information about voters switching between parties, on a weekly basis.

Voters switching parties is not unheard of, but the data show that in the first weeks of the year, far more Republicans have changed their voter registrations than Democrats. Many voters are changing their affiliation in key swing states that were at the heart of the battle for the White House and control of Congress.

Nearly 10,000 Pennsylvania voters dropped out of the Republican Party in the first 25 days of the year, according to the secretary of states office. About a third of them, 3,476, have registered as Democrats; the remaining two-thirds opted to register with another party or without any party affiliation.

By contrast, about a third as many Pennsylvania Democrats opted to either join the Republican Party (2,093 through Monday) or to register with no party or a minor party (1,184).

Almost 6,000 North Carolina voters have dropped their affiliation with the GOP. Nearly 5,000 Arizona voters are no longer registered Republicans. The number of defectors in Colorado stands north of 4,500 in the last few weeks. And 2,300 Maryland Republicansare now either unaffiliated or registered with the Democratic Party.

In all of those areas, the number of Democrats who left their party is a fraction of the number of Republican defectors.

Several local elections offices in Florida reported a surgein registration changes in the days after the assault on the Capitol. Two counties in the Miami area reported a combined 1,000 Republicans registering under other labels in just the two days after the Jan. 6 attack. In those same two days, only 96 Democrats switched parties.

Three counties in the Tampa Bay area reported more than 2,000 Republican voters registering under some other partys banner. In those same three counties Hillsborough, Pasco and Pinellas just 306 Democrats switched their affiliations.

So many voters switching parties absent a pending deadline has piqued the interest of elections experts. Most people tend to stick with the party with which they initially register, and those who do change are usually motivated by a looming primary election.

Usually, absent a primary election that would induce people to switch parties so that they could participate in that primary, you dont see much activity in party registration, said Michael McDonald, a voting and elections expert at the University of Florida.

Only a small handful of states report voter registration data on a weekly basis. Others report monthly activity, and many states do not report granular details about those who leave one party or the other. Once more states report party registration data, the true number of Republicans who have re-registered in recent weeks may prove to be much higher.

McDonald said those who would take the proactive step to change their registration are likely to be well-informed voters who both follow the news and are aware of the process by which they would change their actual registration.

These people who are doing this activity, they are likely very sophisticated voters. Theyre highly participatory, most likely, he said. If youre sophisticated enough to change your party registration, youre somebody whos likely to vote.

Some of the data suggests the Republican exodus is happening in the suburban counties where GOP candidates and former President TrumpDonald TrumpBiden reverses Trump last-minute attempt to freeze .4 billion of programs Trump announces new impeachment legal team after reported departures Republicans scramble to unify heading into next election cycle MORE struggled so much in both the 2018 and 2020 elections.

About a third of the Pennsylvania voters who dropped their affiliation with the Republican Party are registered to vote in Montgomery, Bucks, Chester and Delaware counties, the so-called Collar Counties outside of Philadelphia that once decided the balance of power in the Keystone State. Those counties have trended increasingly Democratic in recent years; President Biden won 58 percent of the vote in Chester County, the best performance ever recorded by a Democratic candidate there.

By contrast, Republicans picked up more former Democratic voters in places like Berks, Luzerne and Cambria counties, exurban and rural areas where Trump did better than previous Republican nominees.

Trump scored 68 percent of the vote in Cambria County, home of Johnstown and ancestral Democrats once represented in Congress by Rep. John Murtha (D). That tally was better than any previous Republican nominee, besting even the 66.5 percent Trump won there in 2016.

McDonald cautioned that the number of voters switching parties overall was relatively small the 10,000 Republicans who fled in Pennsylvania represents a tiny fraction of the partys almost 3.5 million registered voters in the state, for example. But the figures represent a reversal of registration trends that were taking place before Election Day.

Prior to the election, the trend was in the opposite direction, there were more Republicans that were registering, McDonald said. Its not just like its a little blip, its also a blip in a different direction than weve seen in previous years.

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Tens of thousands of voters drop Republican affiliation after Capitol riot | TheHill - The Hill