When future historians seek to pinpoint exactly when it was that the Republican Party stopped being a legitimate political entity promoting a coherent set of principles and was transformed fully into a cult of personality organized around a would-be autocrat, Feb. 4, 2022, might be in contention. That date — last Friday — was when the Republican National Committee formally censured two Republican House members, Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger, for clinging to genuine conservative ideals while refusing to promote the toxic populism and contempt for democracy that now defines their party.
As if to further detach themselves from reality, Republicans declared that the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol insurrection constituted “legitimate political discourse.”
Former Sen. John Danforth told us this declaration “should make all real Republicans sick,” adding, “It is now the official position of the Republican Party that the storming of the Capitol, including attacks on police officers, physical intimidation of members of Congress and destruction of government property, is ‘legitimate political discourse.’ … It is a complete reversal of what we always have been and should be.”
