As President Trump prepares to leave office with his party in disarray, Republican leaders including Senator Mitch McConnell are maneuvering to thwart his grip on the G.O.P. in future elections, while forces aligned with Mr. Trump are looking to punish Republican lawmakers and governors who have broken with him.
The bitter infighting underscores the deep divisions Mr. Trump has created in the G.O.P. and all but ensures that the next campaign will represent a pivotal test of the party's direction, with a series of clashes looming in the months ahead.
The friction is already escalating in several key swing states in the aftermath of Mr. Trump's incitement of the mob that attacked the Capitol last week. They include Arizona, where Trump-aligned activists are seeking to censure the Republican governor they deem insufficiently loyal to the president, and Georgia, where a hard-right faction wants to defeat the current governor in a primary election.
Republicans on both sides of the conflict are acknowledging openly that they are headed for a showdown.
"Hell yes we are," said Representative Adam Kinzinger of Illinois, one of the 10 House Republicans who voted to impeach Mr. Trump.
Mr. Kinzinger was equally blunt when asked how he and other anti-Trump Republicans could dilute the president's clout in primaries: "We beat him," he said.
Still, Mr. Trump has vowed a campaign of political retribution against lawmakers who have crossed him — a number that has grown with the impeachment vote. The president remains hugely popular with the party's grass roots and is most likely capable of raising enough money to be a disruptive force in 2022.
Scott Reed, the former chief political strategist for the Chamber of Commerce, a powerful business lobby, said that Republicans should prepare for a ferocious internecine battle. Mr. Reed, who as an ally of Mr. McConnell's helped crush right-wing populists in past elections, said the party establishment would have to exploit divisions within Mr. Trump's faction to guide its favored candidates into power.
"In 2022, we'll be faced with the Trump pitchfork crowd, and there will need to be an effort to beat them back," Mr. Reed said. "Hopefully they'll create multicandidate races where their influence will be diluted."
An early test for the party is expected in the coming days, with Trump loyalists attempting to strip Ms. Cheney of her House leadership role. Should that effort prove successful, it could further indicate to voters and donors that the party's militant wing is in control — a potentially alarming signal to more traditional Republicans in the business community.
Jonathan Lines, a former chairman of the Arizona Republican Party who is supportive of Mr. Trump, said he feared that an insular faction would cripple the G.O.P. at a moment when it needed to be rebuilding.
"It's just destroying the party to go out and try to censure people," Mr. Lines said. "It doesn't show that they're trying to attract new people to the party."
Several Republicans said they hoped Democrats would overreach with their newly acquired power in ways that would unite the G.O.P. "Nothing unites a party like a common threat," said Representative Steve Stivers of Ohio.
Yet Mr. Stivers, who ran the House campaign committee in 2018 and saw how Mr. Trump hurt the party, said he hoped the president would "step aside" in the fashion of his predecessors who have "had their time in the sun."
Post Trump, Republicans Are Headed for a Bitter Internal Showdown (Published 2021)
G.O.P. leadership would like to blunt President Trump’s influence over the party. Mr. Trump and his allies want to punish those who have crossed him. A series of clashes looms.
