What if the eventual Jan. 6 report is rigorous, compelling — and doesn’t really matter?

What if the eventual Jan. 6 report is rigorous, compelling — and doesn’t really matter?

Vice Chair Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) speaks with Chairman Bennie G. Thompson (D-Miss.) and Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) as the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack meets on Capitol Hill on Dec. 13. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)

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 By Michael Gerson

Columnist

Today at 3:17 p.m. EST

But I am haunted nonetheless by a recent, decisive moment in American democracy. In early February, Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) made an appeal to the Senate as it was voting whether to pursue a second impeachment trial against Trump. As both prosecutor and witness, Raskin described what a disruption in the peaceful transfer of power actually looks like: his visiting daughter, hiding in fear of her life; the door-to-door hunt by fanatics seeking public officials to attack; and the desecration of sacred national symbols. “This cannot be the future of America,” he said.

Days later, during the impeachment trial, the United States had its cleanest, clearest opportunity to deliver itself from the influence of a demagogue. In this case, the proxy for the country was held by a handful of Republican senators who had the power to exile Trump to a South Florida St. Helena. A few — Richard Burr (N.C.), Bill Cassidy (La.), Susan Collins (Maine), Lisa Murkowski (Alaska), Mitt Romney (Utah), Ben Sasse (Neb.) and Patrick J. Toomey (Pa.) — met the moment. The rest did not. Neither the unrefuted facts nor the emotional trauma that Congress had just experienced was sufficient. Most Republican senators found technicalities to justify cowardice.

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The case against Trump was utterly compelling and eventually useless. And that poses the question: What if the eventual Jan. 6 report is a detailed, powerful, comprehensive and legally compelling indictment of Trump and it doesn’t really matter? Or at least doesn’t matter to the voters it needs to?

In some ways, the GOP’s rank and file still holds the proxy for America. The votes of Trump-alienated Republicans will eventually be required to deny him the 2024 GOP presidential nomination or to seriously damage his reelection effort. It is Republican tolerance for the intolerable that threatens American democracy.

As of now, the GOP is a party lacking a moral and intellectual gag reflex. According to the Pew Research Center, roughly two-thirds of Republicans say that Trump “definitely” or “probably” won the 2020 election. And the share of Republicans who believe it is “somewhat” or “very” important to prosecute the Jan. 6 rioters has fallen by more than 20 percentage points this year.

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Just as a serious slice of the Republican coalition is being radicalized by propaganda and conspiracy theories, a larger portion is becoming inured to the radicalism in their midst. An attack on the theory of republican self-government is being conducted under the air cover of general Republican partisanship. And this means the restoration of the GOP to power would involve the unleashing of its worst elements.

Is there any force that could break through Republican complicity and complacency? The largest obstacle I find in talking with this group is what a friend calls “outrage exhaustion.” Just mentioning a vivid revelation by the Jan. 6 commission or a new GOP effort to rig the electoral college results in compulsive eye-rolling. Why can’t we just focus on the future and the considerable failures of the Democrats?

The possible responses to the ongoing crisis are limited. The first is the Cheney option. The marvelous public fortitude of Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) and Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.) is providing a public service far larger than their number would indicate. They are defining the moral and legal ground to which shocked and burned Republicans — as the worst of revanchist Trumpism eventually unfolds — can repair. Both are proving the theoretical possibility of responsible Republicanism.

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The second is the Churchill option. Advocates of Republican sanity should take the time to read William Manchester’s “The Last Lion: Winston Spencer Churchill: Alone, 1932-1940.” It recounts nearly a decade in which Churchill’s push for British armament against the German threat led only to ostracism and isolation. This was modern history’s most vivid demonstration of persistence in the face of suicidal lunacy. We are now in need of the same.

The final is the Franklin option. This is less a strategy than an attitude. In Raskin’s closing statement of the second impeachment, he quoted Benjamin Franklin: “I have observed that wrong is always growing more wrong until there is no bearing it anymore. And that right, however opposed, comes right at last.” Such faith has often accompanied democratic theory, but it is not required by it. At the moment, it is a leap in the dark.