Democrats are still engaged in a fit of angst and unhappiness after the 2020 election in spite of Joe Biden's taking the White House. Now, the prevailing wisdom is that the GOP will take back the House in 2022 and continue to make gains. However, all the forecasts of doom may be premature. The GOP has a definite Donald Trump problem on its hands that may poison it all the way through 2024. The slow motion nightmare for the GOP is already playing out in Georgia and will only get worse right up until the time that Trump is convicted of something.

Trump's Threatened Pardons Will Stink for an Eternity

It is hard to understate what the effect of the mass pardon that Trump is planning at the end of his term. Even trying to pardon himself will leave him with a stench that will last for hundreds of years. No American president has ever tried anything that galling to try to relieve themselves of the consequences of rank criminality. When adding a blanket preemptive pardon for his family and his attorney, Trump will leave office under an even worse stench than he emitted when he was is on office. The pardons will be an admission that there was wrongdoing, and the Trump family will operate under a cloud that may even be too much for some of the Republican Party.

The next mess that Trump will put the Republican Party in is his full-on war with Fox News. Trump has tried to punish Fox for calling the election in Arizona and not aiding his bonkers claims of election fraud. Trump is openly talking about starting his own media network and has also pushed networks like OAN and Newsmax. However, Fox News has a brand name to defend, and they will not go out quietly. The result may be an all-out war on the Right with every Republican forced to take sides. Loyalty to Trump will be a dividing line in the party, even though Trump will have been rejected by the American public. Just the battle between Newsmax and Fox will be enough to drive a wedge through the heart of the Republican Party.

The Coming GOP Civil War May Wreck the Party and Drive Even More Away

This is before the primary season for the 2022 midterm elections even begins. Rest assured that there will be more than just a food fight in the GOP. There will be an entire Costco's worth of food slung as Trump tries to punish those who he views as insufficiently sycophantic to him. This will cannibalize the Republican Party before it even goes up against the Democrats in the general election. The specter of Trump may harm the Republicans in the all-important area of candidate selection. Moreover, you can count on a rerun of 2010, when the Republicans lost several winnable races by running candidates very far out of the mainstream. While it did not seem to hurt the GOP much in 2020, the next election will feature Trump on the outside looking in.

Of course, the Democrats will need to unify on their own to take advantage of a bitterly divided GOP. So far, Biden has largely managed to pacify the Left with his cabinet selections, even though the possibly Republican Senate has constrained him from giving too much to the progressives. Democrats have largely seemed to avoid any major missteps since the election, and the focus has largely been on Trump's attacks on his own party for insufficient loyalty.

This is exactly the best place for Republicans as they start four years out of the White House. In 2009, the party unified very quickly behind Mitch McConnell, even with the party holding only 40 seats in the Senate. McConnell was able to rally his party, and the GOP soon received a jolt of energy from the Tea Party. Now, the Republicans have a destabilizing force who remains the head of the party when they are trying to hold the Senate and prepare to take back the House.

The last 50 days of the Trump Administration may set the tone for the next two years. If the first month since the election is any indicator, the GOP will not be able to move past Trump, and he will dominate the conversation for the foreseeable future. Once he pardons his family, he may be toxic forever.