McCaul, chair of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, told Puck News he thinks “Russian propaganda has made its way into the United States, unfortunately, and it’s infected a good chunk of my party’s base.”

Turner, chair of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, told CNN that anti-Ukraine messages from Russia are “being uttered on the House floor.”

could the GOP go the way of the Whig?

why didn't the last political party breakup lead to a three-party system? is there an inherent reason?

Instead of starting with a problem that both Democratic and Republican voters can agree exists and then incorporating his own conservative stance, he has immediately launched himself to the far-right. He has attacked education as being “too woke” and argued that teachers are indoctrinating children. But the idea that teachers are largely partisan actors is only shared by a tiny segment of Republican voters.

According to a recent Pew Research study, 44 percent of Republicans (and 42 percent of Democrats) believe that teachers’ influence in the classroom is just about right. Only 16 percent of Republicans think teachers’ influence in the classroom is oversized.

"Trump spent his presidency packing the federal government with Republicans eager to undermine the missions of the agencies they led. But Biden’s aggressive action upon taking office should be encouraging for progressives, since it indicates that the new president will move swiftly to fire Trump allies with high positions in the executive branch."

doing the right thing only when it's self-serving should get no credit at all

"""
six senators—Ted Cruz, Josh Hawley, Cindy Hyde-Smith, John Kennedy, Roger Marshall, and Tommy Tuberville—still voted to reject Arizona’s electors and thus disenfranchise the state’s voters. So did a hundred and twenty-one representatives—a majority of the Republican caucus in the House—including the Minority Leader, Kevin McCarthy, of California.

“the best way we can show respect for the voters who were upset is by telling them the truth" - Mitt Romney

What has changed is that Trump is now clearly on the losing side, and McConnell and Graham know it.

seven Republican senators—Cruz, Hawley, Hyde-Smith, Cynthia Lummis, Marshall, Rick Scott, and Tuberville—voted to reject Pennsylvania’s electors. So did a hundred and thirty-eight Republican representatives.
"""

I'm sure this is harmless

totally normal; totally complicit

is it fair to call the party undemocratic?

when admitting reality is "political suicide", the whole party is morally bankrupt, the institution as well as its voter base

former editor in chief of BuzzFeed News who leaked the Steele Dossier argues that shouldn't have been done and journalists should reprise their role as gatekeepers of information, lest discourse turn into a mess of unsubstantiated mudslinging, which is what it was in 2016.
"In 2017, I made the decision to publish the unverified “Steele dossier,” in part on the grounds that gatekeepers were looking at it and influenced by it, but keeping it from their audience... the special nervousness that many outlets, including this one, feel about the provenance of the Hunter Biden emails is, in many ways, the legacy of the WikiLeaks experience. I’d prefer to put my faith in Mr. Murray and careful, professional journalists like him than in the social platforms’ product managers and executives. And I hope Americans relieved that the gatekeepers are reasserting themselves will also pay attention to who gets that power, and how centralized it is, and root for new voices to correct and challenge them."

almost any election scenario this fall is likely to lead to popular protests on a scale we have not seen this century

“What we need is a new social contract that will enable us to get past extreme polarization to find consensus, tip the shares of economic growth back toward workers and improve government funding for public health, education and infrastructure,” Goldstone and Turchin wrote in their Berggruen Institute article.

Can that really happen in today’s combat zone of weaponized social media, in which even modest proposals to ratchet back inequality are framed as “communism”?