The Republican Party is beginning to look like an out-of-control Tilt-a-Whirl at a cheap carnival, threatening to fling GOP leaders, loyal Trumpists and appalled traditionalists into the dimly lit future.

Politico puts it bluntly: “Senate Republicans are in open war against each other,” with the party “splintered badly as at least 12 senators planned to join about 140 House members to contest Joe Biden’s election win.”

It is, as an Axios headline puts it: “McConnell Party vs. Trump Party.”

“The Republican battle lines being formed in President Trump’s final days — his loyalists vs. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s establishment — will shape American politics for the next four years,” Axios predicts.

Republican Sens. Lisa Murkowski (AK), Mitt Romney (UT), and Pat Toomey (PA) all came out with strong weekend statements, pushing back against “the doomed — but alarmingly undemocratic — scheme to reject Biden electors,” reports Vox.

Former House Speaker Paul Ryan, a Republican, said in a statement that “Biden’s victory is entirely legitimate” and that efforts to sow doubt about the election “strike at the foundation of our republic.”

“McConnell needs to rise to the occasion and decide how much the Constitution means to him,” Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA), chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, told The Atlantic. “He can paper over it, try to ignore it, dance around it, but anything less than a full-throated rebuke of this attack on our peaceful transfer of power will tar his reputation indelibly.”

The anti-Biden effort is led by Sens. Josh Hawley (MO) and Ted Cruz (TX), who claims that “fraud and irregularities in the 2020 election exceed any in our lifetimes.” 

But as MSNBC’s Chris Hayes pointed out in a Twitter post, Republican leaders “spent months lying to people, telling them the election was stolen and now turn around and cite the fact that many people believe them as evidence!”

“Donald Trump has been marking the final days of his presidency by creating new fissures within the Republican party,” says The Guardian, which quotes Republican strategist Alex Conant:

“This is a time when the party should be unifying around opposition to Biden’s agenda,” Conant said. “Instead, Trump is continuing to divide Republicans in a way that really weakens their political hand. Biden’s the real winner in all of this because his opposition is more divided than ever.”

The power struggle threatening to rip the GOP in two “will help define everything from the future of conservatism and right-wing media to President-elect Biden’s ability to win Republican cooperation in office,” Axios says.

More importantly, it “will determine if Trumpism — and its norm-smashing tactics — come to permanently define one of America’s two major political parties.”