Trump Republicans won't be convinced to "moderate" their views. [View all]

[Tom Rinaldo]

Not the party functionaries and elected officials anyway. They're all in with the madness now, having burnt their bridges back to the mainstream a long time ago, if ever they once existed. The true fanatics have their entire identity wrapped up in Trump worship and support for conspiracy cults, white nationalism, and fascist movements. The cynical pragmatist Republicans, those who live to get reelected, chose to swerve hard right at every fork in the road they came to over the last year. They don't have fuel to explore a different way forward now. For Republican U.S. Senators the last exit off the dirt road they are barreling down is rapidly approaching with Trump's impeachment trial, and few seem inclined to take it.

Positions have hardened, trenches have been dug and battle lines fixed. Total opportunists like Ted Cruz and Lindsey Graham have all placed their bets, there is no more backing down or away possible for them. They've signed onto the Pirate Ship and they'll go down with it if they can't reach a safe insurrectionist harbor.

It is theoretically possible that the Republican Party, sometime over the next four years, might offer up a scattering of more moderate leaders, but it won't be through the conversion of any of the current office holders who have thrown in their lot with the rabble. If moderating change ever comes to the Republican Party it will be over the politically dead bodies of those who currently hold power within it.

Democrats, up to and including President Joe Biden, can still reason with reasonable Republicans, but for the most part that entails reaching out to the minority of relatively sane Republican voters left in America in any quest for common ground.The vast majority of Republican elected officials have already jumped off any fences they might have been straddling, and landed with the insurrectionists. And that is how they must be known and dealt with.