Are Republicans Too Divided to Have a Civil War?

Photo Credit: APA nasty fight is brewing among Republicans over a proposal to defund Obamacare. Another intra-party fight is flaring over national security and the war on terror. And yet another is well under way over immigration reform. In each, some Republicans seem more fired up to go after each other than to take on President Obama and the Democrats. The conflicts could be signs that the party is headed toward all-out civil war. Or they could be part of an unhappy but temporary stretch for a party that still hasn’t gotten over its rejection by the voters in 2012.

It’s more likely that this is just a rocky time for a rejected and confused party. The conflicts inside the GOP today just don’t line up in the configuration of a classic civil war. There are multiple issues involved, and the lawmakers on various sides of various issues don’t lean the same way on each issue. Republicans who are opponents on one issue are allies on another. Looking at the Senate, for example, it’s unlikely that there will be a total civil war between Senate Faction A and Senate Faction B when some members of the opposing factions are united in Faction C, or Faction D, or so on. In other words, it may be that the Republican Party is too divided to have a real civil war. Perhaps chaos would be a better description. We’ll know more later.

What we know now is that GOP lawmakers are remarkably tense over the issue of defunding Obamacare. When I asked Sen. Tom Coburn about it Friday, he went off on the issue, calling the proposal “dishonest” and “hype,” not to mention “impossible.” It can’t be done, given the Republicans’ 46-vote minority in the Senate, Coburn argued, and the government shutdown that could result from such a maneuver would be disastrous for the GOP.

Coburn questioned the motives of the GOP senators — among them Mike Lee, Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio, and Rand Paul — who are behind the effort, calling the move “a denial of reality mixed with a whole bunch of hype to promote groups and individuals.” And then: “The worst thing is being dishonest with your base about what you can accomplish, ginning everybody up and then creating disappointment.” Later, when I mentioned Lee specifically, Coburn responded, “Lee’s answer [to critics] is, ‘Give me a different strategy.’ Well, there isn’t one, because we lost the [election]. I’m getting phone calls from Oklahoma saying, ‘Support Mike Lee,’ and I’m ramming right back: Support him in destroying the Republican Party?”

Those are pretty strong words from a senior Republican about his fellow senators. And some other GOP senators echoed those sentiments. “I agree with my friend Dr. Coburn,” tweeted Sen. John McCain. And Richard Burr called the defunding ultimatum “the dumbest idea I’ve ever heard.”

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