Column: The GOP's civil war is just beginning, and the fighting will get worse before it gets better

[DonViejo]

By DOYLE MCMANUS WASHINGTON COLUMNIST

FEB. 3, 2021 4 AM PT

Many years ago, as a young foreign correspondent, I went to Beirut to cover the Lebanese civil war. On the wall of the newsroom where I worked, someone had posted a running count of how many truces had come and gone. “This ceasefire is #35,” it read. “Next ceasefire is #36.”

I’ve been thinking about those scrawled reminders as I’ve watched the Republican Party’s internecine struggles after the chaotic departure of Donald Trump.

The party has descended into a state of virtual civil war between unrepentant loyalists to former President Trump and those impatient to cast off the chaos of the last four years and begin a post-Trump era. And as in Lebanon, the hostilities promise to be a prolonged series of flare-ups, with neither side willing to permanently lay down arms.

Pro-Trump forces have won the early skirmishes. In the Senate, most Republicans have made it clear that they intend to acquit Trump in his impending impeachment trial. In Arizona, the state Republican Party censured its own GOP governor for certifying that Joe Biden had won the presidential election there.

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https://www.latimes.com/politics/story/2021-02-03/the-gops-civil-war-is-just-beginning

[RobertDevereaux]

1. May this toxicity spiral down swiftly into extinction.

[ECSkeptic]

2. I keep reading about a Republican Civil War...

...but it looks every week more and more like a Republican Ethnic Cleansing. There are anti-Trump, "true" conservatives in the GOP, but they're outnumbered and outgunned (pun intended) at every turn. Or they just plain don't have the sack to make a move. When the whole world saw their party's crazies show their asses in the halls of the Capitol, they seemed to grow a little bit of a backbone, but that didn't last long; within a few days, they were back to a precious few sane voices howling in the void. When are the sane Republicans going to put any points on the board?