Full Scale Civil War Breaks Out In The GOP-- But Are Trumpy-the-Clown's Threats Credible?

Congressional Republicans have supposedly been afraid of Trump attacking them in tweets for months. And this week, he went for it. He called out the Freedom Caucus and tweeted "we must fight them" and tweeted twice specifically against Tea Party leaders Mark Meadows, Jim Jordan and Raul Labrador. Earlier, it came out that OMB Director Mick Mulvaney, a former South Carolina congressman, personally delivered a threat from Trump to Mark Sanford that Señor Trumpanzee was actually hoping Sanford would vote No on TrumpCare so that Trump would have an excuse to recruit and back a primary opponent against him in 2018.

Against the backdrop of crumbling negotiations over the GOP bill to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act, President Donald Trump said last week he wanted to oust incumbent U.S. Rep. Mark Sanford in 2018.

The South Carolina Republican told the Post and Courier that Trump chose to convey this message through an intermediary: White House budget chief Mick Mulvaney, a former member of the S.C. congressional delegation, co-founder of the House Freedom Caucus and a friend.

"'The president asked me to look you square in the eyes and to say that he hoped that you voted ‘no’ on this bill so he could run (a primary challenger) against you in 2018,'" Sanford said Mulvaney told him.

He added that Mulvaney made it clear he did not want to deliver the message but did so at Trump's insistence.

"I’ve never had anyone, over my time in politics, put it to me as directly as that," Sanford said, perhaps understating just how monumental it is for a sitting president to openly go after members of his own party.

Back in February we noted that Sanford would probably be better off keeping the increasingly unpopular Trump at a distance anyway. Today we see even the oafish Hannity has sided with the Freedom Caucus over Trump! And in the fever swamps of the fringe right, when you've lost Sean Hannity...

The 4 members of Congress Trump chose to single out are all pretty well-respected hard-core conservatives, and his move was not a very popular move among Republicans in Congress-- or among hard-core ideologues in the far right grassroots. We'll come back to that in a moment. First, though, let's look at how serious Meadows, Jordan, Labrador and Sanford have to take Trump's overt threats. Let's overlook, for a moment, that Trump has failed miserably in every single Republican primary contest he's gotten involved in and that his preferred candidates have all lost. (Right now the Trump candidate in the GA-06 primary, Bruce LeVell, is polling at 0.6%.)

Fact of the matter is that Trump won all 4 congressional districts of the congressmen he threatened-- and pretty strongly... but not as strongly as the congressmen won the same districts on the same day!

• ID-01- Trump- 63.7%, Labrador- 68.0%
• NC-11- Trump- 63.2%, Meadows- 64.2%
• OH- 04- Trump- 64.3%, Jordan- 68.1%
• SC-01- Trump- 53.5%, Sanford- 58.6%

Mark Meckler, a co-founder of the Tea Party Patriots, was interviewed by The Hill and he made it clear which side he's on: "The man who promised to 'Drain the Swamp' now appears to be the 'Creature from the Black Lagoon.' He is now on the side of the swamp monsters."

Meckler and others on the right have warned that Trump risked losing his grassroots base by whipping support for the healthcare bill.

Many conservatives have so far directed their anger at Ryan and GOP leadership, who they say misled the president on the legislation.

But Trump’s attack on the Freedom Caucus could open up a rift with grassroots conservatives, who have defended the president against criticism over his support for the bill.

Chris Gandolfo, writing for Conservative Review, also took the side of the Freedom Caucus and against Trump's attacks. He wrote that "Though the Freedom Caucus is under assault from all sides, some of its members who have spoken to the media or made public statements are standing strong-- insisting that they are willing to work with President Trump to keep the GOP’s promise to repeal Obamacare. The media has used the failure of the American Health Care Act-- Republican leadership’s phony repeal bill-- as an excuse to attack conservatives in Congress. The Tea Party members of the Freedom Caucus, who opposed the legislation on grounds that it would not improve the American health insurance market, have been labeled 'hardliners' who are unwilling to 'compromise' or 'get things done.'... 'The Freedom Caucus is trying to change Washington. This bill keeps Washington the same, plain and simple,' Rep. Jordan said on Fox News Thursday."

Liberty News Now was even harsher towards the GOP Establishment, into which they're lumping Trumpy-the-Clown. "For those who praised the selfless actions of the Freedom Caucus," wrote Shane Cory, "Trump’s tweet was a shot heard round the nation. Trump is vowing to defeat the leaders who stopped him from passing a $1.4 trillion bill that would raise insurance costs and create yet another entitlement program. The threat is directed at Virginia’s Dave Brat who threw out Establishment icon Eric Cantor. The threat is directed at Texas’ principled Louie Gohmert and the most conservative member of Congress, TEA Party favorite, Ken Buck. To put this in perspective, if you take a look at the Heritage Foundation’s Congressional Scorecard, the President of the United States just vowed to defeat eight of the ten highest-rated conservatives and libertarians in Congress. While threatening members of the Freedom Caucus who hold ratings 90% or higher with Heritage, President Trump strongly stands by Speaker Paul Ryan who holds a pathetic lifetime score of 58%. Paul Ryan is closer to Elizabeth Warren than he is to Dave Brat according to the Scorecard. And Donald Trump wants us to defeat our only principled members of Congress in 2018? Something is simply twisted in Trump World, or we were twisted to trust him."

Or both. And it won't be too long before Trump is going to need the Freedom Caucus members he's been alienating to save him from impeachment. Later we'll talk more about this poll that came out this morning: