I’ll let Greg Sargent handle this one:

In recent days, we’ve learned that Donald Trump fully intended to get the 2020 election “overturned,” that he suggested law enforcement agencies could seize voting machines, and that, if elected in 2024, he might pardon those who violently attacked our seat of government, resulting in five dead and scores wounded.

So how is the GOP’s central committee responding to these developments?

With new efforts to punish the two Republicans who most prominently think this conduct should be disqualifying to lead their party and should call forth a serious national reckoning and institutional response in defense of U.S. democracy.

On Friday, the Republican National Committee voted to censure Reps. Liz Cheney (Wyo.) and Adam Kinzinger (Ill.) for their roles on the House select committee examining the Jan. 6 insurrection incited by Trump.

The censure resolution is explicit on why Cheney and Kinzinger are seen as such heretics. It declares that they want to “destroy” Trump rather than help Republicans win the majority and that their committee is engaged in the “persecution of ordinary citizens engaged in legitimate political discourse.”

Sargent explains that this is a clear demonstration of Donald Trump’s stranglehold on the Republican Party, in that the GOP’s official position is now that the January 6 insurrectionists are “heroes and martyrs” who were merely engaged in “legitimate political discourse.” But I don’t think this is so much about Trump as it is about Republicans hear from the base. Individual Republicans might think assaulting the Capitol is not a legitimate exercise of the First Amendment, but they’re not finding much agreement on that from their constituents.

It might not be good politics to call people “deplorable,” but I’m not running for office. The Republican base is far more of a problem than the lawmakers who kowtow to them.

However, and I’ve said this many, many times in the past, political bases respond to good and bad leadership alike, and Trump is most definitely responsible for leading the average GOP voter into a land or moral decay and degeneracy. Things can and will turn around at some point. While I acknowledge that there’s not much individual congresspeople and senators can do on their own, there will come a time when someone other than Trump has pull and will have the opportunity to lead the right in a better direction.

That time can arrive later or sooner, but I think the prerequisite is that Trump is held accountable in a very legal sense for what he’s done. As long as he’s considered a viable candidate, perhaps even the favorite, for the 2024 presidential election, then nothing is going to improve and I can guarantee that things will get rapidly worse.