Thomas Zimmer: The 1/6 Hearings “delivered,” but “the forces that elevated [Trump] are dominating the Republican Party more than ever – and they are escalating their assault on democracy.”

Another day, another superb thread by Georgetown University Visiting Professor Thomas Zimmer, this time on how “The #January6Hearings delivered more than anyone could have reasonably expected, the case against Donald Trump is ironclad. But the forces that elevated him are dominating the Republican Party more than ever – and they are escalating their assault on democracy.” The fact is as Zimmer writes, “Trump was always more effect, rather than cause of the Republican radicalization against democracy” and so “The danger is that a narrow focus on Trump, on preventing Trump from regaining power, on preventing another January 6 could take too much attention away from Trumpism (with or without Trump) as the animating force on the Right and the *ongoing* assault on democracy.” The scary bottom line?  “There is no separating January 6 from the broader context of the American Right’s anti-democratic radicalization and the ongoing Republic assault on the system. This is one political project, and it may yet succeed.”