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A decade ago, Donald Trump was a registered Democrat. When he joined the presidential race as a Republican in 2015, party leaders scorned him as a gatecrasher and sought to stop his rise.

The same Republican establishment now has rescued Trumps presidency.

After a vote Friday that blocked new witnesses, the Republican-controlled Senate is all but certain to acquit him Wednesday, formally ending the nations third and shortest presidential impeachment trial. That will let Trump remain in office and become the first impeached president to run for reelection.

The acquittal will not only cement Trumps reputation for surviving an onslaught of political perils. It also highlights how the former political neophyte has come to utterly dominate the GOP, with Republican lawmakers bowed by his overwhelming popularity with the partys base.

He has taken over the party in very short order, said Neil Newhouse, a Republican pollster. It was almost immediate after he won the election. Hes a force of nature among Republicans.

If the Senate threw Trump overboard, there might be a revolt from Republican voters, he said.

Trumps acquittal was never really in doubt in the Republican-controlled Senate. Even Republicans who disapproved of his dealings with Ukraine, the heart of the House impeachment charges, said it did not merit making him the first president ever removed from office.

Just because actions meet a standard of impeachment does not mean it is in the best interest of the country to remove a president from office, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) said Friday.

Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.), whose decision late Thursday to oppose calling witnesses was a turning point in the trial, conceded that Democrats had proved their case that Trump pressured Ukraine last year to investigate a political rival by withholding $391 million in security aid.

But Alexander said the charges did not warrant removing Trump from office. Among other reasons, he said, the process was too partisan, with no Republicans joining the House Democrats who impeached Trump on Dec. 18.

Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah), left, voted to hear from witnesses in the impeachment trial, while Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) cast one of the decisive votes against it.

(Shawn Thew / EPA/Shutterstock )

The partisan split was by design. Trump has demanded a kind of political and personal loyalty that his predecessors could not envision, lashing out on Twitter when even loyal defenders step out of line, and claiming unmitigated victories when they stick by his side.

At recent rallies, he claimed he won the House impeachment vote unanimously, citing the 196 Republicans who voted against articles of impeachment without mentioning the 228 Democrats and one independent former Republican Rep. Justin Amash who voted in favor in both articles.

Alexanders political mentor, the late Sen. Howard Baker, helped seal President Nixons fate in 1974 during Watergate, asking famously, What did the president know and when did he know it? Republicans ultimately concluded they had a duty to tell Nixon he faced certain impeachment and removal by Congress if he did not step down.

I hit him as hard and as directly as I could, Sen. Barry Goldwater, the Arizona Republican, wrote in his memoir, describing how he told the Republican president he would get no more than 15 Republican votes if his case reached the Senate. Nixon announced his resignation the next day.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), by contrast, appeared on Fox News with Trumps favorite media figure, Sean Hannity, just as the impeachment trial was reaching the Senate and all but pledged his fealty to the White House.

Im going to take my cues from the presidents lawyers, McConnell said.

It wasnt always thus. Many of the senators who backed Trump at the trial had denounced him bitterly during the 2016 campaign.

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), now one of Trumps closest allies, called him a race-baiting, xenophobic, religious bigot who doesnt represent my party.

The president was viewed as a novelty who was going to, at best, bring more interest to the party and, at worst, tear it down in glorious fashion, said Sam Nunberg, a former Trump campaign advisor.

Al Cardenas, a former chairman of the American Conservative Union, said Trump doubled down on the intense anger that swept the GOP after the 2007-09 financial crisis and Barack Obamas election in 2008, spawning the tea party movement on the right. Republicans fed off that frustration to take power on Capitol Hill after 2010, thwarting much of President Obamas legislative agenda.

Two years after Trump was elected, Democrats retook the House, allowing for his impeachment.

Under Trump, Republican lawmakers have jettisoned at least for now long-held views on the danger of deficit spending, the need for comprehensive immigration reform and the threat from Russia, among other issues. But they also have stocked federal courts with young, conservative judges and passed a tax cut bill, both hugely popular with Republican voters.

Lawmakers who disapprove of Trumps conduct have decided to swallow hard and accept it, Cardenas said, rather than risk losing his support and maybe even control of the Senate.

They believe that you support the Republican Party no matter what, said Cardenas, who is a Trump critic.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), arriving at the U.S. Capitol on Friday, told Fox News before the trial, Im going to take my cues from the presidents lawyers.

(Mario Tama / Getty Images)

Many Republicans compared the impeachment to the bitter Senate fight over Brett M. Kavanaughs nomination to the Supreme Court in 2018. Though a respected judge, Kavanaugh nearly lost his confirmation vote over allegations of a sexual assault of a girl when they were both high school students decades ago, which he vehemently denied.

Though Kavanaugh ultimately prevailed, the grueling experience convinced many Republicans that they needed to unite to withstand bruising fights with liberals, whom they accuse of a systematic effort to tar conservatives.

Republican lawmakers contend that they are acting in the interests of their constituents and their party, and not out of fear of Trumps wrath on Twitter.

Rep. Adam B. Schiff (D-Burbank), the lead House manager in the impeachment trial, outraged some Republican senators when he cited a media report that claimed a White House aide had warned Republicans that your head will be on a pike if they crossed the president.

But days later, Chris Christie, the former New Jersey governor who backed Trump in 2016, publicly suggested that Trump might encourage primary challenges as political revenge against Republicans who failed to support him at the trial.

Trump has already shown his power to cast out dissident Republicans. Two senators, Bob Corker of Tennessee and Jeff Flake of Arizona, both decided not to run for reelection rather than face voters after clashing with Trump.

John Bolton, an archconservative who served 17 months as Trumps national security advisor, is the latest example.

He reportedly wrote in an unpublished memoir that Trump directly tied resumption of military aid for Ukraine with his demand for investigations of Democratic rival Joe Biden, the heart of the impeachment case. Trump has denied any linkage between the two.

Bolton offered to testify under oath to the Senate, but Senate Republicans rallied to prevent him from testifying. Only two broke ranks.

Republicans feared Boltons prospective testimony could potentially blow up, and cause another shoe to drop and lead to pandemonium, said Ken Gormley, president of Duquesne University in Pittsburgh and the author of a book about the Watergate scandal. They didnt want to take that risk.

Instead, Trump and his allies turned on Bolton with a fury, calling the longtime party stalwart a deep state tool, a turncoat and worse. The White House also vowed to block publication of his book, saying it contained classified material.

The Republican Party is a cult of personality at this point, said Sen. Christopher S. Murphy (D-Conn.). I wish Republicans remembered what they all said during the campaign, when they previewed how reckless and irresponsible it would be to make him their nominee.

Whether Trumps impeachment and trial will help or hurt him in November is unknown. Some suggest it will do neither, becoming just another scandal for a president who seems to thrive on them.

Weve gotten to a point where presidential elections are decided by very small percentage points, said Rep. Mark Meadows (R-N.C.), a vocal Trump supporter. If you look at where everybody is on this issue, its pretty much where we were in 2016. I dont know that thats going to change greatly.

Times staff writer Jennifer Haberkorn contributed to this report.

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Republicans who wanted to stop Trump's presidency have now saved it - Los Angeles Times

ANKENY, Iowa Pete Buttigieg isnt a Republican. But hes thinking like one as his presidential campaign tries to engineer a strong finish next week in the first Democratic caucuses.

His closing schedule is heavy on Iowa counties that four years ago flipped from Barack Obama to Donald Trump. His closing argument is an assurance that Bernie Sanders is too liberal for his taste, combined with a pitch for future former Republicans. His team on the ground counts at least 45 precinct captains as recent Republican converts and is quick to brag with a bit of Trumpian flair about the big crowds Buttigieg is drawing in small Republican towns.

Its a demonstrable example of the general election candidate Pete would be, Michael Halle, a senior adviser to Buttigiegs campaign, told BuzzFeed News in an interview. The notion that we have a candidate who could go to and be at home in the Des Moines suburbs the same way hes at home in Tama or Vinton or Keokuk is required to beat Trump in the fall.

Were seeing real results, Halle added. At every single event we go to there is at least one interaction where someone goes up to our organizers and says they were a Republican.

A core part of Sanders argument is that the Vermont senator can expand the Democratic electorate pull in nonvoters or people who may have fallen for Trumps anti-establishment promises. Buttigieg is taking a different tack and suggesting that his candidacy and platform could expand out the partys electorate on the right.

Buttigieg, the former mayor of South Bend, Indiana, is also trying to win back voters who may have fled to Trump in 2016 and is not alone in advocating a more moderate course. Former vice president Joe Biden and Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar his two closest ideological rivals in the race emphasize their crossover appeal and bipartisan backgrounds in Washington.

And Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, whos been more ideologically aligned with Sanders, is making a new electability case by highlighting Trump voters who now back her.

But Buttigieg has been most explicit with the strategy. At a town hall forum Thursday night in Ankeny the Des Moines suburb that Republican Marco Rubio memorably made the base of his Iowa operation four years ago questions from the audience, as they often are, were submitted in writing before disappearing in a fishbowl. When the fishbowl appeared on stage later in the hands of a volunteer, the questions tied neatly into Buttigiegs message and the audience he hopes will hear it. One allowed him to talk about his military experience, another to discuss his plans to appeal to evangelical voters.

I think theres a historic opportunity to engage voters of faith, Buttigieg said on the latter. We should reach out, because I think theres a lot of folks sitting in the pews right now looking around wondering, Wait a minute, is my faith supposed to mean that I support this? What about, I was hungry and you fed me? What about, I was a stranger and you welcomed me?

As for the future former Republicans, Buttigieg has been testing variations on that theme since at least last fall, when he offered the line during the Democratic debate in Atlanta. He sharpened the message this week, first by returning to Fox News the cable network partial to Trump and the Republican Party for a town hall forum televised from Iowa. Both Sanders and Klobuchar have participated in a Fox News town hall, but Buttigieg is the only Democratic candidate to do one twice. And by scheduling one in the final days before the caucuses, he signaled how important the networks conservative viewers and moderates who just may like the idea that hes trying to reach those viewers are to his campaign in the state.

I am convinced, Buttigieg said in a closing argument that conveyed an everything-to-everyone pragmatism, that we are going to beginning right here in Iowa change what people think is possible. That we can send a message to people who are telling us that we have to choose between our head and our heart, that we have to choose between what it takes to govern and what it takes to win, or that we have to choose between unity and boldness in this country. I dont think we have to choose. I don't think we can choose, because I don't think we can get any one of those things unless we get all of them, and this is our chance to turn the page.

That line has since been a staple in Buttigiegs stump speech. And Thursday brought a new escalation meant to paint Biden and Sanders, for different reasons, as poor choices to take on Trump in the fall. After weeks of issuing subtle, no-names rebukes of an older generation of politicians, including during his Fox News appearance, Buttigieg graduated to a pointed critique of Bidens play-it-safe style and Sanders doctrinaire brand of democratic socialism.

Weve got some respectful but serious differences about what its going to take, Buttigieg said in Decorah. I hear Vice President Biden saying that this is no time to take a risk on someone new. But history has shown us that the biggest risk we could take with a very important election coming up is to look to the same Washington playbook and recycle the same arguments and expect that to work against a president like Donald Trump who is new in kind.

Then I hear Sen. Sanders calling for a kind of politics that says you've got to go all the way here and nothing else counts. And it's coming at the very moment when we actually have a historic majority, not just aligned around what it is we're against, but agreeing on what it is we're for. A majority ready to make sure that the public sector steps up and delivers health care just not so sure about the idea of forcing everybody onto that public plan. A majority that's ready for a game-changing transformation in the affordability of college, but not so sure about the idea of covering every last penny for the tuition of the children of millionaires and billionaires.

Later, in Ankeny, Buttigieg urged voters to leave the politics of the past in the past.

Kurt Meyer, who chairs the Mitchell County Democratic Party and recently announced his plan to caucus for Warren, questioned a strategy that relies on Republican defectors.

Many [a] campaign has theorized that success would be brought about by all the new, previously unheard-from people who would show up at the right time and do the right thing, Meyer wrote in an email. Very, very few people have ridden such a strategy successfully into office. Knowing that the Super Bowl is on Sunday, its a bit akin to saying my team doesnt have to block or tacklewe have a NEW strategy that will make those old essentials obsolete.

To which I say, oh really?!?

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Pete Buttigieg Wants To Win Iowa By Winning Republicans - BuzzFeed News

Not three weeks after his op-ed published, Mr. Tillis reversed course and voted for the national emergency. In June, Mr. Walker announced he would not pursue a primary.

Tillis was a wake-up call for everyone, said Tyler Sandberg, a Republican strategist. If you disagreed with something the president did, it was like, Be careful; you saw what happened to Tillis.

The result is that the National Republican Congressional Committee is no longer consumed by the once inevitable task of neutralizing serious challenges to its members from the right. According to a G.O.P. official who spoke on the condition of anonymity to share private discussions, apart from Mr. Fitzpatricks race, only a few primaries this cycle have been deemed cause for concern.

The presidents monopoly on Republican voters is more powerful than any ideological or stylistic divide, said Nathan Gonzales, editor of Inside Elections and an elections analyst for CQ Roll Call. There might be interest in challenging an incumbent from the right or as an outsider, but as long as that member stays close to Trump, there just isnt enough oxygen to get the job done.

But then theres Representative Kay Granger, the 12-term incumbent of Texass 12th District. As ranking member of the House Appropriations Committee, shes one of the lower chambers most powerful Republicans. Yet she finds herself confronting her most and arguably only competitive primary in her two-plus decades in Congress, a challenge driven by charges of a lackluster allegiance to Mr. Trump.

On Sept. 24, a technology company executive named Chris Putnam, who promoted himself as an outsider just like President Trump, declared his candidacy. As The Texas Tribune reported, in the six days before the close of the quarter on Sept. 30, Mr. Putnam boasted a haul of $456,000, trouncing Ms. Grangers quarter-long effort of $284,000.

Ms. Granger is certainly no Brian Fitzpatrick unlike her House colleague, she votes with Mr. Trump roughly 97 percent of the time. But flashes of dissent, including her call for Mr. Trump to remove himself from consideration as commander in chief after the release of the Access Hollywood tape in 2016, have been enough to buoy her opponent. In an interview, Mr. Putnam accused Ms. Granger of being a full-on Never Trumper during the last three years. We have to get people who are running for the right reasons, he said.

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A Primary From the Right? Not in Trumps G.O.P. - The New York Times

The libertarian-minded Massie has broken with Trump on an array of key issues, which McMurtry has highlighted repeatedly since launching his campaign earlier this month. But Massies new commercial aims to turn the tables on McMurtry, who is branding himself as a staunch Trump ally in lockstep with the president ahead of the May 19 primary.

Hes even worse than a Never Trumper. Todd McMurtry is a Trump hater, says the ad, which opens with a photograph of Massie and Trump flashing grins and thumbs-ups.

Massies commercial then highlights a handful of critical comments McMurtry made about Trump on Facebook, mostly in 2017, the first year of Trump's presidency.

Sad but true. Trump is the epitome of a weak male, said one McMurtry post, read in classic attack-ad fashion by the narrator.

Trump is an idiot, says another.

Hillary is right, McMurtry writes in another comment. He is temperamentally unqualified to be president.

Massies commercial concludes by tying his primary opponent to Hillary Clinton: Siding with Crooked Hillary. Thats Todd McMurtry, the Trump hater.

The race in Kentuckys deeply conservative 4th Congressional District, which spans the northernmost part of the state, underscores how GOP primaries are becoming litmus tests for fealty to Trump. Republican contests in areas from the Philadelphia suburbs to Fort Worth, Texas, are hinging on a simple factor: whether an incumbent House Republican has been sufficiently supportive of the president.

The significance of this test became clear during the 2018 primary season. Former Rep. Mark Sanford (R-S.C.) lost reelection to a challenger who highlighted his denunciations of the president. Two other Trump critics, Sens. Jeff Flake of Arizona and Bob Corker of Tennessee, retired rather than face primary challenges from Trump-aligned opponents when their poll numbers sagged after blowups with Trump.

That has led a small group of Republicans, which now includes Massie, to go to great and unusual lengths to dissuade the president from endorsing a primary opponent. Alabama Rep. Martha Roby withdrew her support for Trump after the release of the lewd Access Hollywood tape just prior to the 2016 election, prompting a furious response from local Republicans. So once Trump took office, Roby became a frequent visitor at the White House in hopes of smoothing over her relationship with the president. At the time, Roby was trying to fend off a primary threat from a pro-Trump opponent. She won reelection in 2018 but is retiring in 2020.

Massies ad cuts into the main point of his opponents campaign. McMurtry, one of the attorneys who represented Covington Catholic student Nicholas Sandmann in his defamation lawsuit against several media outlets, has pointed out that Massies voting record is less aligned with Trump less than any other member of the Kentucky congressional delegation, saying that Trump cant rely on our congressmans support.

Running in a district that Trump won by more than 35 percentage points, McMurtry has vowed there will be no daylight between him and the president. Earlier this month, he tweeted out a picture of the Trump Hotel in Washington.

Hoping to see my favorite President, McMurtry wrote.

Its not the first time a candidate has bought advertising time in South Florida hoping to get the presidents attention. Shortly after launching his Democratic presidential campaign last fall, former New York Mayor Mike Bloomberg ran TV commercials in the area, coinciding with the presidents holiday travel to Mar-a-Lago.

And Massies campaign is making no secret of its intended audience.

We know the president will be in Florida this weekend, and we want him to know that our primary opponent has not been a supporter of his, said Massie campaign manager Jonathan Van Norman.

The Massie campaign is spending around $3,000 to air the commercial during Fox News programs this weekend in the West Palm Beach area, including Fox News Sunday. The spot is expected to air more than 50 times on Fox News over a 36-hour period.

The campaign will also spend $13,000 to run the ad on Fox News in Kentucky from Feb. 1 through Feb. 10.

The McMurtry campaign responded to the ad by pointing to several pieces of legislation and recent votes on which Massie broke with Trump, including a resolution aimed at curtailing the presidents ability to wage war with Iran.

Every time President Trump needs him, Massie stabs him in the back, McMurty campaign manager Jake Monssen said. It would be great if Thomas Massies problem was limited to old Facebook posts. Its not. His problem is his anti-Trump voting record in the House.

While Trump has endorsed several House Republicans who are trying to fight off primaries, aides to the president say he is unlikely to intervene in the Kentucky contest either for or against Massie. While they acknowledge Massie has sometimes opposed the president, they also note that he voted against impeachment in the House.

That has not kept Massie, who is facing the most serious reelection threat of his congressional career, from pursuing a presidential endorsement. Van Norman said the reelection campaign had been seeking Trumps support.

Certainly, Van Norman said, Congressman Massie would welcome an endorsement from President Trump in his race.

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The extreme measure one House Republican is taking to win over Donald Trump - POLITICO

The sponsor of a bill in the Iowa legislature that would have removed transgender people from the states Civil Rights Act has announced that the proposal wont move forward.

Nine GOP state representatives introduced HF 2164, which proposed removing gender identity as a protected class under theIowa Civil Rights Act. Now, Republican Rep. Steven Holt who chairs the Iowa House Judicial Committee presiding over the hearings for the bill has announced that the bill wont be considered any further.

Related: State legislatures are filled with anti-LGBTQ measures, thanks to a religious right playbook

Its dead, Holt said. It just would have had a lot of unintended consequences.

Rep. Dean Fisher (R) sponsored the proposal to address a whole host of issues that he claims transgender people cause the state. He cited examples such as ensuring trans women inmates in the state are housed in womens facilities and trans women athletes competing with fellow women, although neither of those have widely reported issues in Iowa.

Fisher also expressed hope that removing trans people would pave a way to allow Iowa medical providers to remove gender affirming surgery as a Medicaid-approved procedure.

Gender identity had been included in the states civil rights act by amendment since 2007. Several civil rights groups, including the ACLU, were highly critical of the proposal, saying it would set the clock back in Iowa.

Discriminating against transgender people or any Iowans will not make them, or us, go away or stop being who they are, Mark Stringer, ACLU Iowa executive director, told NBC News. Well continue to remind legislators of the obvious: Transgender people already do exist; they arent going anywhere; and they have large communities of Iowans fighting for equality and dignity right alongside them.

While Holt does not disagree with his fellow Republicans proposal, but knows it would not get the support to pass in the Iowa House of Representatives. The only group known to support the proposal was the evangelical Christian group The Christian Leader, which also opposes same-sex marriage.

In 2018, Iowa Republicans filed a bathroom bill that would have amended the states civil rights act to allow employers and business owners to ban transgender people from bathrooms and other facilities. That bill also did not pass.

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Iowa Republicans give up on removing transgender people from state's civil rights protections - LGBTQ Nation