Donald Trump and Josh Hawley set off Republican meltdown with Georgia elections

For now, though, Trump is dead-set on keeping a party that has indulged him, enabled him and been enabled by him at every pass onside for one more battle. The results of those efforts, though, have been uneven. The decision to dash his veto of this year’s National Defense Authorization Act, which Trump opposed because it didn’t strike legal protections for social media companies and included a provision to rename military bases named after Confederate leaders, marked the first time during Trump’s presidency that Republicans openly and materially rejected his desires.

“Our Republican Senate just missed the opportunity to get rid of Section 230, which gives unlimited power to Big Tech companies. Pathetic!!!,” Trump blared. “Now they want to give people ravaged by the China Virus $600, rather than the $2000 which they so desperately need. Not fair, or smart!”

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi rubbed salt in the wound in a statement after the Senate vote. Her chamber, too, had, with Republican support, overridden Trump’s veto.

“The full United States Congress, with these sweeping and overwhelmingly bipartisan votes, has delivered a resounding rebuke to President Trump’s reckless assault on America’s military and national security,” the California Democrat said. “In three weeks, our country will inaugurate a President who respects our military, protects our security and honors the will of the Congress. Until then, the Congress urges Trump to end his desperate and dangerous sabotage.”

That seems unlikely.

One last loyalty test

That, it appears, is the elusive bridge too far for McConnell. Having mined Trump’s presidency for years as he installed conservative judges — including three to the Supreme Court — and passing massive corporate tax cuts, the majority leader is not on board this time around. Looking ahead to the 2022 midterms and the next general election two years later, he knows his members’ actions could be used against them, no matter what direction they go, in future campaigns.

Trump retweeted Hawley’s statement on Friday and layered it with a promise to — on January 6 — reveal “massive amounts of evidence” to support fraud claims that have been tossed out of dozens of courts around the country and dismissed by Republican state lawmakers and nonpartisan election officials.

Before Hawley’s decision, Thune — the Senate majority whip — had played down rumors anyone from his conference would join the electoral college challenge, telling reporters a couple weeks ago any attempt “would go down like a shot dog.”

“I just don’t think it makes a lot of sense,” he added then, “to put everybody through this when you know what the ultimate outcome is going to be.”

Dissent in the GOP ranks

Meanwhile, fissures in the Senate GOP are opening up as the prospect of a vote becomes more real.

Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski defended Thune and called it “dispiriting” that Trump was “working to pit Republican against Republican.” She also expressed frustration that the President was complicating life for Republicans who had stood by him throughout his term.

“I think it’s quite interesting that he has demanded a loyalty test from so many Republicans and then when they are loyal to him — and there is one incident, one statement — and he is the first one to throw those loyal individuals under the bus,” Murkowski told CNN. “That’s not loyalty as I know loyalty,” added the Alaska Republican, who’s no stranger to internecine…