Jason Sattler

After 18 months of being torn over whether Donald Trump is a terrible misogynist or a wonderful misogynist, the Republican Party has united again — in a mission to harpoon the candidacy of Hillary Clinton.

But even if this quest is successful, Trump’s candidacy has exposed rifts in the party that will only grow more jagged if voters reward Republicans with another House majority.

If you lived through the 1990s, you don't need a reminder of what it looks like when a Republican Congress obsesses over any excuse to take out a Clinton presidency. But you're getting one anyway. The next Clinton hasn't even been elected and some conservatives already are speculating about impeaching her.

Republican House Oversight Chair Jason Chaffetz, with a big assist from FBI Director James Comey, also decided to give us a blast from the past. Comey’s letter to Congress last week, announcing the discovery of more emails that might be relevant to the FBI probe of Clinton’s private server, left Mad Libs-style blanks for Republicans to fill in their own crimes. This proved to be the perfect chum for Chaffetz. “Case reopened,” he eagerly tweeted.

And just as he hoped, the news firestorm began.

Suddenly, an inevitable win for Clinton along with a Democratic Senate and gains in the House now seemed far less inevitable, and Canada began to secure its southern border.

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Chaffetz’s sudden conversion back to crucial Trump supporter is a tribute to what Paul Waldman calls the right’s “shared belief in Clinton’s all-encompassing villainy."

You may remember that Chaffetz withdrew his backing for Trump after the “hot mic” Access Hollywood tape revealed the self-alleged billionaire bragging about assaulting women. "My wife, Julia and I, we have a 15-year-old daughter," Chaffetz told CNN. "Do you think I can look her in the eye and tell her that I endorsed Donald Trump for president?"

But last week, Chaffetz decided that he could tell his daughter he was supporting Trump, because stopping the first woman major party nominee from becoming president was just that important. Also, he clearly had other things on his mind, such as “years” of investigations of Hillary Clinton — much of it reruns of what we’ve already seen from the first eight or so committees that investigated the tragedy in Benghazi, Libya.

Meanwhile, in the Senate, Ted Cruz — fearful that he might lose his title as “Most Likely to Obstruct” — is building the case to block any appointment to the Supreme Court until there’s a Republican president. Why not add four years to a Supreme Court vacancy that's already setting records? Heck, why not just amend the Constitution to say only Republicans should be allowed to govern while Democrats stick to what they do best, making the TV shows, music and movies Republicans love?

The GOP can’t give in now.

If they take their eyes off the villain, Republicans may recognize that they’re headed for a civil war that resembles Sears catalog models acting out the shootout scene at the end of Quentin Tarantino’s Reservoir Dogs. (Spoiler: Everyone dies.)

Stan Collender, the editor of the Capitol Games and Gains blog, has predicted that House Speaker Paul Ryan could lose his job even before the end of this year. Ryan was reluctant to endorse Trump and decided that he would not “defend” the nominee in the aftermath of the Access Hollywood video. That puts him at odds with Trump, the party base and three dozen Tea Party conservatives in the House Freedom Caucus — which reportedly met "secretly" Wednesday to discuss Ryan's future.

The only way Republicans can avoid this unhappy schism is to lose the House.

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If they keep it, America gets the gift of never-ending investigations into never-ending investigations, and the base gets to maim the career of the man who was once considered its great hope. If they keep the Senate as well, and Clinton wins, the Supreme Court goes on in its stunted state.

If they win the White House, expect 100 days filled with lawsuits against the dozen women who have accused their new president of sexual assault.

Every time Trump offends another minority group, analysts dust off the Republican National Committee "autopsy" report from 2013 where the party tried to remind itself to stop alienating the minority voters it needs to win over most. But the report's section on women gets much less attention.

Exit polls show Mitt Romney lost women to President Obama by 11 percentage points in 2012. The GOP report notes that he lost single women by a "whopping" 36 percentage points and adds, "The RNC must improve its efforts to include female voters." Yet in 2016, Trump is doing so much worse that if he loses, likely it will be due to women.

The Republican embrace of Trump is a clear sign that defeating a Clinton is far more important than any sort of outreach the party once knew it needed to do. As an institution, the GOP paid no real cost for the endless investigations and ponderous impeachment of President Bill Clinton. But in the end, even Captain Ahab eventually ended up with the line from his harpoon around his neck.

Jason Sattler, a member of USA TODAY's Board of Contributors, is a columnist forThe National Memoand the answer to the obscure trivia question, "Who's the guy who tweets as @LOLGOP?"

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