RICHMOND, Va. (AP) — The national Republican Party is at war with itself, struggling to reconcile a bitter divide between former President Donald Trump’s fierce loyalists and those who want Trumpism purged from their party. The GOP need only look across the Potomac River into Virginia to see the dangers that lurk if it cannot correct course. In just nine months, Virginia voters will elect a new governor in what marks the first significant test of the Republican Party’s strength in the post-Trump era. And in a Southern state that had a Republican governor as recently as 2014, Virginia’s 2021 Republican field is facing the prospect of a political disaster.
