If history is to be our guide, we have to look at the Republican Party as something that has gone through a great deal of transformation. More so, in many ways, than the Democratic Party. Rising from the ruins of the Whig Party in the 1850's, the Republican Party has undergone attempts at schisms in the past--most notably the 1912 creation of the Progressive, or Bull Moose Party under Theodore Roosevelt. The impeachment trial of Donald Trump is not only a trial about the events of January 6, 2021, but in the weeks that have followed has now become a referendum on the state of the Republican Party. The slow metastasizing cancer that has arisen in the party has many possible causes. Marty points out that the most recent symptoms of radical right (Trumpist) apologists seems to have its start in the scorched earth, winner-take-all mentality of Newt Gingrich and his fellow absolutists. Coupled with an angry "outrage for profit" obfuscation of the airwaves by partisan radio and television shows, this sort of anger at the world and Democrats in particular seems to have become the boil that now is in need of lancing. Will the conventional stalwarts of the party prevail? Will the Trumpists coalesce into a full-blown political philosophy of "Christian-Conservative-Nationalism"? We are to witness a more subtle battle play out in the background of the second impeachment trial---the battle for the survival and soul of the Republican Party.
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