"I hope it’s a fever that will break": GOP wrestles with infrastructure vote backlash

“Some elements of the party,” said Ed Rogers, the veteran Republican lobbyist and strategist, “keep finding new ways to define Republicanism: ‘Do you think Trump won the election? Do you think everyone who voted for the infrastructure package is a sellout and has done great harm to flag and country?’”

He said, “I hope it’s a fever that will break.”…

But the eruption over infrastructure laid bare how quickly Trump could reassert himself — and impose new litmus tests — on the party. As the GOP looks to expand on its victories from last week ahead of the midterms next year, it is simultaneously shrinking into a concentrated and more Trumpified version of itself, leaving less room than ever for the few centrist Republicans who survived Trump’s presidency…

“I wonder if it was a thoughtful analysis that this bill has too much spending,” said Tom Campbell, a former California Republican congressman and Reagan administration staffer who began collecting registrations last year for his new party, the Common Sense Party. “If so, I’d respect it much more. But I don’t think it was. I think it was much more, ‘Let’s make the Democrats fail.’”