Thread by @dsamuelsohn

NEW: A coalition of anti-Trump Republicans is threatening a move that could upend US politics. Their message comes straight out of the last 6 chaotic years & boils down to this: Abandon Trump or they'll form an alternative party. @thisisinsider ($) businessinsider.com/anti-trump-rep…

But the prospect of a splinter GOP isn't sitting well with some Rs who spoke w/ @thisisinsider this week & warned of dire consequences from a further fracturing of a party that's already divided by 1 wing's loyalty to Trump & another's quest to return to the politics of Reagan.

"Having three parties in this country would make it very difficult to get a working majority in the Senate and House," said Sen. Chuck Grassley, who said fracturing the GOP would make an already dysfunctional Congress even worse. "It'd be a wrong thing to do."

Try telling that to the Republicans who look at the Trump era and warn that much, much, much worse things will happen to the United States and the wider geopolitical world if no one stands up to the Florida man whose rage tweets once captivated the world.

An organizer of the newest Republican realignment group told Insider they'd release an open letter Thursday AM to Trump-enamored Rs titled "A Call for American Renewal." The unveiling, the organizer said, is partly timed to show Liz Cheney she's not alone in her Trump disdain.

"The current GOP leadership has bought into this hook, line, and sinker, and only fealty to Trump matters at this point among those leaders," former NJ Gov. Christine Todd Whitman told @thisisinsider on Monday.

Republicans on Capitol Hill, including Sen. Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania, who voted to convict Trump during the Senate's impeachment trial in February, told Insider creating a new party would damage the GOP.

"I'm aware of people who have been discussing that … I'm not interested in that," Toomey told Insider. "I don't think it's a good idea. I'm going to stay in the Republican Party."

If the party splintered, Toomey added, "we will not be politically viable."

Former GOP Rep. Steve Bartlett, who signed onto the letter, told Insider that the coalition of center-right Republicans has been working quietly for the past couple of years to come up with a set of principles to renew the Republican party.

"The underlying belief is that the American political system and the Republican Party have undergone just a great crisis, if you will," Bartlett said. "And so it's renewing our sense of decency and good government and core values."

Traditional Republican values of limited government, free enterprise, strong economic policies, national security, character, and decency, Bartlett said, have been thrown aside, and the new group wants to restore the GOP's "core values" going back to Abraham Lincoln.

"It's not just Donald Trump, but it's Trumpism and also the worship of one man," Bartlett added. "I mean, that's appalling in and of itself."

Sen. Mitt Romney, a Utah Republican who is one of Trump's most vocal critics, told Insider on Tuesday he'd not heard of the discussions for a new GOP, and that he wasn't involved. But he added, "Nothing surprises me in politics."

3rd parties have been notoriously difficult to sustain in the US. They lack the $ & organizing resources they'd need to beat Rs & Ds. Think the Libertarian Party or the Green Party. More often than not, they serve as spoilers for the major party they're more closely aligned with.

ND GOP Sen. Kevin Cramer: "Part of what's driving that discussion is that some people just don't like Donald Trump and they want everybody else to not like Donald Trump, but the reality is that he is in many respects still the titular head of our party."

"But more important than him and his personality is that his philosophy is the governing philosophy of the Republican Party. It's not as globalist as it used to be … It's a populist conservatism" Cramer added.

Cramer, who has frequently defended Trump, said it would "be very unfortunate," if the group of anti-Trumper saw through their threat to create a new party "because politics only works by addition."

Republicans who talked with Insider on Tuesday all urged the party to stick together despite their differences.

"Going into 2022 it's all about unity," Sen. Rob Portman of Ohio said, chuckling a bit before calling back "Big tent!" as he headed to a meeting in the US Capitol.

In January, Portman, a George W. Bush administration alumnus, announced that he's retiring at the end of his second term. He bemoaned the "partisan gridlock" that's made his job insufferable.

Sen. Joni Ernst, a Republican of Iowa, shook her head "no" and looked visibly dismayed when asked about splitting up the GOP.

"We need party unity," she said.

The Republicans say the party's "tent" is big enough for even those with different philosophies — all while the party works to punish members who dare go against Trump, such as Cheney, Kinzinger, Romney, and others.

Kevin Cramer: "There's some in the party that don't want to give up the old sort of Republican Party. But that doesn't mean there's not room in the tent for all of those views."

More Cramer: "They're certainly much more aligned with Donald Trump's Republican Party than they are with the socialist agenda coming out of the Democratic Party, and to splinter it one more time would not achieve any party's policy."

Others, such as Trump loyalist Sens. Ted Cruz of Texas and Florida's Rick Scott, who is chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, downplayed the threat of a new faction of the party organizing more formally.

"That's much more of the fever dream in the press; that's something that isn't actual political reality," Cruz told @elvina_nawaguna. "I don't think any such effort would go anywhere, & I understand that Democrats would love to see that happen, but I think that's quite unlikely."

That's a pretty good tease of the reporting from @elvina_nawaguna @WARojas & @ngaudiano - Check out the full story with a @thisisinsider subscription: businessinsider.com/anti-trump-rep…