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Are Republicans secretly supporting Biden? After saving Trump from impeachment GOP may be hoping he loses

A number of GOP members in the Senate are now thinking about saving their own majority in chamber so that a probable Biden presidency could be kept in check

In February this year, the Senate Republicans went all out to save the presidency of Donald Trump in the impeachment case after the Democrats-controlled House voted against him. The president was eventually acquitted. 

Also in the case of choosing the successor to the iconic Ruth Bader Ginsburg in the Supreme Court, the Senate rallied behind the president who hurried to nominate Amy Coney Barrett despite the opponents’ criticism that the red party was betraying its own stand of not picking a Supreme Court judge in an election year. Senior Republican senators like Mitch McConnell and Lindsey Graham faced a huge backlash by taking a U-turn and toeing the president’s line. 

More GOP senators are thinking about post-Trump politics?

But now, with around two weeks left for the next presidential election in which Trump will take on Joe Biden, some of the GOP senators are acting like they are less convinced about the mercurial business-politician will get a chance to extend his stay in the White House.

The GOP members of the Senate are thinking about putting a check on a probable Biden presidency by maintaining the party’s majority in the chamber. Recently, North Carolina Senator Thom Tillis told Politico: “The best check on a Biden presidency is for Republicans to have a majority in the Senate.”

The undercurrents in the GOP against the president became all the more evident as a couple of senators recently told media outlets about their disappointments over the commander-in-chief. Texas Senator John Cornyn told the Fort Worth Star-Telegram that he differed with the president on several issues, including trade, debt and deficit and also using military funds for building the border wall with Mexico. The veteran senator said his relationship with the president is almost a strained one. 

Nebraska lawmaker Ben Sasse also lashed out at Trump recently. In comments leaked to the Washington Examiner, the 48-year-old accused the president as someone who “kisses dictators’ butts” and “sells out our allies”. He also slammed the president as someone who ridicules evangelicals in private and alleged that his family treats the presidency as a business opportunity. Sasse is also of the opinion that Trump flirts with White supremacists and warned that young people could  “become permanent Democrats because they’ve just been repulsed by the obsessive nature of our politics or if women who were willing to still vote with the Republican Party in 2016 decide that they need to turn away from this party permanently in the future”.

Trump did not take these criticisms well. In his familiar way of responding on Twitter, he called Sasse “Little Ben Sasse” and called his ways “stupid and obnoxious”, "least effective" of all 53 Republican senators and a “liability to the Republican Party”.

But these criticisms are not always an exception. Even McConnell -- the 78-year-old Senate majority leader -- has spoken against Trump even if he has supported him at times. He recently criticized the president’s response to the Covid-19 pandemic that has killed more than 220,000 people and affected more than 8.2 million. At an event in Kentucky’s Bourbon County earlier this month, the state’s senator said: “I personally didn’t feel that they were approaching protections from this illness in the same way that I thought was appropriate for the Senate.”

2 women GOP senators also disagree with Trump

To add to these senators’ viewpoints, a couple of women senators from the Republican Party have also expressed their objection to the process of picking Barrett as the next Supreme Court judge. Trump recently slammed Susan Collins from Maine in a tweet, saying she did not support his other decisions in the past as well, like healthcare.

Alaska’s Lisa Murkowski is the other senator who has not backed the nomination of Barrett and Trump has been seen slamming her in the past over various issues, including a threat that he would campaign against her party colleague in her state in 2022. 

The unfavorable viewpoints presented by these GOP senators give an indication that they would not be taken aback if Trump loses the election. They rather would prefer to build a more traditional opposition to a probable Biden presidency. Especially in case of Cornyn and Sasse, they themselves are also poll-bound this year like Trump (the latter may even harbor a presidential ambition) and as they look strong to win the electoral challenge, they feel the urge to convey the message even strongly. 

There have also been moments when people like Cornyn and Sasse acted in a way that baffled Trump’s critics (like voting against bringing more witnesses to the president’s impeachment) but yet, the gradually growing voice against the president ahead of his November 3 test perhaps sends across a deafening message.