The National Interest: Jonathan Chait

They Will Do It Again Republicans have not been chastened by the revelations of the January 6 committee.

- Jonathan Chait

THE JANUARY 6 HEARINGS are about the events of a single day, but they implicate a much broader phenomenon: the Republican Party’s faltering commitment to democracy. The mob attack on Congress a year and a half ago was merely the most grotesque manifestation of Donald Trump’s rejection of democracy, and Trump himself merely the most grotesque manifestation of his party’s authoritarian impulses.

“Parties that are committed to democracy must, at minimum, do two things: accept defeat and reject violence,” wrote the political scientists Steven Levitsky and Lucan Way earlier this year. Trump has built a movement that does neither. And while he is justifiably known for his petty egocentrism, he has finally and genuinely infused this movement with beliefs that are greater than his self-interest and whose power will outlast him.

The hearings’ organizers, hoping to gain the widest possible approval, have devoted respectful attention to the perspective of the Republican Party’s mainstream. That perspective was expressed by Trump’s former campaign manager Bill Stepien, who testified, “There were two groups. We called them kind of my team and Rudy’s team,” referring to Trump’s onetime personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani. “I didn’t mind being characterized as being part of Team Normal.” During his deposition, former attorney general William Barr, another member of Team Normal, colorfully heaped scorn on Trump’s claims to have been the victim of systemic voter fraud.