WASHINGTON _ A loose association of current and former Republicans working to sink President Donald Trump's reelection now see another political feat that's necessary for them to have a shot at reclaiming their party: flipping the U.S. Senate to the Democrats.
The emerging belief, based on more than a dozen interviews, is that defeating Trump alone is insufficient to spur the reckoning required to salvage a party that will almost undoubtedly confront a crossroads if the president loses to Joe Biden this fall. Many argue that GOP senators must pay a steep price for their unabating fealty to Trump, even if it hands Democrats complete control of the federal government.
"The analogy would be in the same way that fire purifies the forest, it needs to be burned to the ground and fundamentally repudiated," said Steve Schmidt, a Republican-turned-independent political strategist who now works for The Lincoln Project, one of the most pugnacious of the anti-Trump GOP groups. "Every one of them should be voted out of office, with the exception of Mitt Romney."
