WASHINGTON — Three days after Representative Peter Meijer was sworn into office, facing down a mob of violent rioters and a constitutional test, he broke with his party’s leaders and a majority of his Republican colleagues and voted to certify President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s victory.
Now, less than a week later, Mr. Meijer, a freshman lawmaker from Michigan, is considering breaking what has been the guiding orthodoxy of his party — loyalty to President Trump — and voting to impeach its leader.
“What we saw on Wednesday left the president unfit for office,” Mr. Meijer said.
Most of Mr. Meijer’s colleagues in the freshman House Republican class voted last week to overturn the election results, and some of the loudest in his cohort have rushed to embrace and elevate the president’s inflammatory brand of politics and conspiratorial impulses.
The blunt, chastening language of Mr. Meijer and his fellow freshman Representative Nancy Mace of South Carolina, in particular, has dramatized in one freshman class the vast gulf between the dueling wings of a conference fractured by the departing president’s demand for total loyalty.
Persons:
Peter Meijer, Joseph R, Biden, Meijer, Trump —, ” Mr, Meijer’s, Mr, Trump, Nancy Mace
Organizations:
WASHINGTON, Republican
Locations:
Michigan, South Carolina