President Trump not only inspired a mob to storm the Capitol on Wednesday \u2014 he also brought the Republican Party close to a breaking point.<\/p>\n
Having lost the presidency, the House and now the Senate on Mr. Trump\u2019s watch, Republicans are so deeply divided that many are insisting that they must fully break from the president to rebound.<\/p>\n
Those divisions were in especially sharp relief this week when scores of House Republicans sided with Mr. Trump in voting to block certification of the election \u2014 in a tally taken after the mob rampaged through the Capitol.<\/p>\n
Republicans who spent years putting off a reckoning with Mr. Trump over his dangerous behavior are now confronting a disturbing prospect: that Wednesday\u2019s episode of violence, incited by Mr. Trump\u2019s remarks, could linger for decades as a stain on the party \u2014 much as the Watergate break-in and the Great Depression shadowed earlier generations of Republicans.<\/p>\n
\u201cHis conduct over the last eight weeks has been injurious to the country and incredibly harmful to the party,\u201d said Chris Christie, the former governor of New Jersey who was the first major Republican to endorse Mr. Trump.<\/p>\n
Mr. Christie said Republicans must \u201cseparate message from messenger,\u201d because \u201cI don\u2019t think the messenger can recover from yesterday.\u201d<\/p>\n