GOP senator texted Joe Manchin in effort to lure him to Republican Party

Manchin has hinted publicly that he could leave Democratic Party

West Virginia Sen Joe Manchin speaks to reporters (Copyright 2021 The Associated Press. All rights reserved)

A Texas Republican senator is making public appeals to West Virginia Sen Joe Manchin, a centrist Democrat, after Mr Manchin bucked his party and announced his opposition to the current iteration of President Biden’s signature Build Back Better Act.

Sen John Cornyn texted Mr Manchin early Tuesday morning, inviting him to join the GOP and leave his liberal colleagues behind.

“Joe, if they don’t want you we do,” Mr Cornyn texted his Democratic colleague on Tuesday, the Texas senator told Nexstar.

He added to the news channel, local Texas NBC affiliate KXAN, that he would see Mr Manchin potentially joining the GOP as “the greatest Christmas gift I can think of”.

“I don’t know what he will decide to do. But I do know West Virginia has gotten increasingly red,” Mr Cornyn told the news station, adding: “And I think his vote on Build Back Better is reflective of what he’s hearing from his constituents in West Virginia. So yeah, we’d love to have him. That would change the majority.”

Mr Manchin has publicly indicated that he may not be a Democrat forever, citing a wide ideological gulf between himself and the majority of the Democratic Senate caucus.

It was rumoured earlier this year that Mr Manchin was telling colleagues he had considered the possibility of leaving the party. In an interview published in CNN on Monday, he told the news outlet that he thought there was still a place for him in the Democratic Party, despite his opposition to much of the president’s agenda.

"Well, I think,” he said, when asked if his immediate future was still with the party.

"I would like to hope that there are still Democrats that feel like I do,” he added. “I'm socially – I'm fiscally responsible and socially compassionate.”

"Now, if there's no Democrats like that, then they'll have to push me wherever they want me,” the conservative Democrat added.

Even if he were to leave the party, however, it would not be so simple as Mr Cornyn stated in his interview, and it probably wouldn’t even change the overall makeup of the Senate too significantly.

The senator specified in October that even if he were to take the drastic step of leaving the party, he wouldn’t join the GOP. He’d instead serve as an independent senator, one of three, alongside Sen Bernie Sanders of Vermont and Sen Angus King of Maine.

And like both of the Senate’s other independents, Mr Manchin specified that he would caucus with the Democrats, meaning that the party would retain majority control of the upper chamber until at least the 2022 midterm elections.

Speaking with reporters in a scrum, he clarified that if his centrist stance "causes [Democrats] a problem, let me know, and I'd switch to be an independent, but I'd still be caucusing with Democrats”.