Trump attacks your family? Your wife? Your mom? No big deal in today’s GOP.
For the others like Greg Pence and McConnell, it’s perhaps less about Trump and more about party fealty, which at the moment translates to fealty to Trump. McConnell, for instance, sharply criticized Trump’s conduct vis-a-vis Jan. 6 in an apparent effort to distance the Republican Party from Trump. But that effort failed, as Rep. Liz Cheney’s excommunication from the GOP House leadership shows. With that issue apparently settled, the Jan. 6 probe threatens to rehash a story that Republicans would very much like to avoid rehashing ahead of the 2022 election. That’s an election in which they have real hopes of regaining both chambers of Congress — and McConnell could regain his status as Senate majority leader. McConnell’s No. 2, Sen. John Thune (S.D.), essentially acknowledged that political calculus on Wednesday.
