The Republican civil war, and why Trump is winning it

Reporting from Washington —  The deep split within the Republican Party was never more in evidence than this week, but so, too, were the reasons why President Trump is winning the fight so far.

When Sen. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.) denounced Trump in a Senate speech for “reckless, outrageous and undignified behavior” that was “dangerous to a democracy,” he said what a lot of Republican elected officials believe.

When he said that a Republican of his professed views faces a “narrower and narrower path to nomination in the Republican Party,” he said what a lot of them fear.

I’m David Lauter, Washington bureau chief. Welcome to the Friday edition of our Essential Politics newsletter, in which we look at the events of the week in Washington and elsewhere in national politics and highlight some particularly insightful stories.

FLAKE-ISM AND ITS DISCONTENTS

Back-to-back remarks from Flake and Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) on Tuesday added up to a stunning rebuke of Trump, as Lisa Mascaro wrote. Only rarely have senior elected officials of a president’s own party so publicly excoriated a chief executive.

Corker and Flake have several things in common. The most important in the current context is that neither plans to run for reelection. Along with Flake’s colleague from Arizona, Sen. John McCain, who is fighting brain cancer, they have little to lose by speaking their minds. But the fact that both men decided not to run again speaks to the weakness of their political position, particularly in Flake’s case.

Coincidentally, just a couple of hours before Flake spoke, the nonpartisan Pew Research Center released a detailed study of public opinion, which goes a long way toward explaining their lack of support.

Every few years, Pew researchers sift through masses of data and sort voters into a handful of categories to produce a field guide to American politics, what Pew calls a typology. I wrote about one key finding of this year’s study — partisans on both sides think they’re losing the political fights that matter.

This year’s typology has four groups that make up the Republican coalition. The group Flake most closely fits — optimistic, favorable to immigration and international trade, pro-business and skeptical of government regulation — is one Pew dubs the “new era enterprisers.”

Unfortunately for Flake, that group makes up only about one-in-five Republicans. Two other Republican groups, which Pew dubs “country-first conservatives” and “market skeptics,” together are more than twice the size of his faction and sharply disagree with many of its core views.

The country-first group, in particular, deeply admires Trump and hews to the sort of racially inflected nationalism pushed by the president’s former chief strategist, Steve Bannon.

The real battleground in the GOP is the group that Pew calls “core conservatives,” who make up more than four in 10 Republicans and are also among the most likely to vote.

That group is not exactly in love with Trump — about half say they have mixed feelings about the way he conducts himself, compared with 41% who approve. But they overwhelmingly approve of the job he’s doing.

They also have little patience for Republican officials, like Flake, who say the GOP badly needs to reach out to minorities and become less of a white-person’s party. Among the group’s defining views is the belief that discrimination against blacks and women is largely a thing of the past.

In interviews after his speech, Flake said he hoped that rank-and-file Republican opinion eventually would come around to his view and declare “enough.” Pew’s evidence suggests, at minimum, that day remains a long way off.

The same data, however, also show that the hard-core Bannon-ite vote remains a distinct minority in the GOP. That’s why, as Cathy Decker wrote, Flake’s decision not to run could be bad news for Bannon’s favored candidate for the Arizona Senate seat, former state Sen. Kelli Ward.

Almost immediately after Flake’s announcement, political pros reported that the “phones are blowing up” with discussions about who would now enter the race, Decker wrote. By week’s end, talk centered on Rep. Martha McSally, an establishment conservative who is popular with many Arizona Republicans. Because her Tucson-area congressional district voted for Hillary Clinton in the last election, she might fare better in a statewide race for Senate than in a reelection bid.

But a McSally-Ward primary could be ugly. The fear among Republican strategists, as Mark Barabak and Michael Finnegan wrote, is that Bannon’s threat of intensely fought primary races against GOP establishment figures could hand Democrats an opening to retake the Senate. Arizona could prove a key test.

[Barabak also looked this week at how Trump has changed the rules for unconventional candidates.]

REPUBLICAN ANGST IN CALIFORNIA

Bannon’s speech to the California Republican convention this past weekend was everything that establishment strategists might have feared. Read the text.

The convention highlighted the state party’s divisions, Seema Mehta wrote. “I currently feel like a stranger in a place where I used to feel home,” Francis Barraza, a top aide to San Diego Mayor Kevin Faulconer, told her.

Given the weakness and divisions in the state’s GOP and the way California’s top-two primary system works, it’s possible that the November election next year could feature no Republicans on the ballot for the state’s highest offices.

As Mark Barabak wrote, that scenario is one reason why Republicans could help send Sen. Dianne Feinstein back to Washington — even if they don’t much like her.

The prospect of no Republicans at the top of the ticket would heighten the risks for the party’s congressional candidates in contested seats. Among the vulnerable is Orange County Rep. Dana Rohrabacher. Sarah Wire reported that he suffered another blow this week as Republican leaders tightened restrictions on his subcommittee because of his connections with Russia.

FORGING AHEAD ON A TAX CUT

Republican leaders are doing their best to ignore the divisions in their party and keep pushing forward on their priorities, Mascaro wrote.

They’re having some success, but it’s not easy. They needed Vice President Pence to break a tie in the Senate to kill a consumer-protection rule allowing class-action lawsuits against banks.

And House Speaker Paul Ryan had to push hard to get just enough votes to approve a budget resolution. That opens the way forward on a tax cut bill, but the close vote shows the tough road ahead for the administration’s top legislative priority. Republican leaders plan to unveil the tax bill on Wednesday and hope to push it through the Ways & Means Committee in less than a week.

One key issue on taxes is the fate of the deduction for state and local taxes. Rep. Kevin Brady (R-Texas), the chairman of Ways & Means, said this week he expects a deal to keep a limited version of the state and local tax deduction.

California is one of the states most affected by whether the deduction survives or not. The state’s Republican members of Congress have taken a very low-profile approach to the issue, Sarah Wire reported. That’s a notable contrast to their GOP colleagues from New York and New Jersey.

Will the eventual deal do more for affluent New Yorkers than their counterparts in California? We’ll find out soon.

DINOS VERSUS DEVELOPMENT

The Trump administration is close to a decision on whether to scale back the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument in Utah. Scientists fear that stepped up coal mining in what’s now protected land could endanger one of the country’s richest areas for dinosaur discoveries, Michael Finnegan reported.

A new federal report, meantime, said the administration’s inaction on climate change could carry a big price tag, Evan Halper wrote.

OTHER NOTABLE STORIES

A U.S. appeals court rejected a Trump administration antiabortion rule, clearing the way for a 17-year-old immigrant being held in federal custody to end her pregnancy. The decision could be a precedent for other pregnant minors in immigration detention centers.

Sen. Kamala Harris says she won’t back a bill to keep the government open without a plan to protect the “Dreamers” who face the prospect of deportation starting in March.

Trump gave a speech calling the opioid epidemic an “emergency,” but offered few new resources to combat it, Noam Levey wrote.

House Republicans are trying to revive interest in one of last year’s campaign controversies, the Obama-era purchase of a U.S. uranium mine by a Russian-backed company.

The administration announced new vetting rules for refugee admissions.

And amid the growing national outpouring of women talking publicly about sexual harassment, the California Senate has begun to examine allegations of long-standing misconduct by some state lawmakers.

ALL THE PRESIDENT’S TWEETS

Twitter has long been Trump’s favored means of pushing his message. We’re compiling all of Trump’s tweets. It’s a great resource. Take a look.

LOGISTICS

That wraps up this week. My colleague Christina Bellantoni will be back Monday with the weekday edition of Essential Politics. Until then, keep track of all the developments in national politics and the Trump administration with our Essential Washington blog, at our Politics page and on Twitter @latimespolitics.

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David.lauter@latimes.com

@davidlauter