The Banana Republicans Split

If Donald Trump does actually follow though on his threat to create his own party, nearly half of current Republicans would join him, according to a new USA Today/Suffolk poll from over the weekend.

If there's a civil war in the Republican Party, the voters who backed Donald Trump in November's election are ready to choose sides.

Behind Trump.

An exclusive Suffolk University/USA TODAY Poll finds Trump's support largely unshaken after his second impeachment trial in the Senate, this time on a charge of inciting an insurrection in the deadly assault on the Capitol Jan. 6.

By double digits, 46%-27%, those surveyed say they would abandon the GOP and join the Trump party if the former president decided to create one. The rest are undecided.

"We feel like Republicans don't fight enough for us, and we all see Donald Trump fighting for us as hard as he can, every single day," Brandon Keidl, 27, a Republican and small-business owner from Milwaukee, says in an interview after being polled. "But then you have establishment Republicans who just agree with establishment Democrats and everything, and they don't ever push back."

Half of those polled say the GOP should become "more loyal to Trump," even at the cost of losing support among establishment Republicans. One in five, 19%, say the party should become less loyal to Trump and more aligned with establishment Republicans.

The survey of 1,000 Trump voters, identified from 2020 polls, was taken by landline and cellphone last Monday through Friday. The margin of error is plus or minus 3.1 percentage points.

They express stronger loyalty to Trump the person (54%) than they did to the Republican Party that twice nominated him for the White House (34%).

 

If only a quarter to a third of Republicans would absolutely stay in the GOP if Trump made a third party, the term "absolute disaster" doesn't begin to cover it for national Never Trump Republicans. But as much as I'd love to see Republicans split their own vote and get destroyed by Democrats in any even remotely competitive House district, Senate race, or Governor's race, I can't imagine Trump would be allowed to do this because it would lead to a near total takeover of the government by Democrats.

But what Trump does have is leverage over his foes in the GOP, and that leverage is going to only grow stronger. he's still going to pick primary winners in just about every GOP race. That's good for Trump, and bad for the country.

We'll see how much damage the split causes, but it's getting increasingly untenable, and I expect sooner rather than later, the opposition to Trump will be removed completely.