On Thursday, the Republican National Committee (RNC) took the next steps to forward an official censure of Republican Rep. Liz Cheney and Rep. Adam Kinzinger.  That censure resolution doesn’t pull any punches: Republicans are nervous about the findings of the Jan. 6 committee, and anxious to promote the new standard that obedience to Trump is more important than following the law, upholding the Constitution, or discovering the truth. 

But there is one particular piece of the resolution that stands out—and not in a good way. 

The idea here that Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger were never real Republicans, but only “professed” that they were as some part of long con is extraordinary enough. But nothing else in the censure resolution quite matches up to the claim that the insurgents who smashed their way into the Capitol—in an event that injured over 150 police officers, caused millions of dollars in damage, included the theft of materials from both Congressional chambers as well as offices, and ultimately resulted in nine deaths—were just “ordinary citizens engaged in legitimate political discourse.”

The resolution may be intended to condemn Cheney and Kinzinger, but what it does is absolutely erase any scrap of legitimacy for the RNC.

As The New York Times reports, in the days immediately following the Jan. 6 assault, Republican leaders in Congress were quick to condemn the violence. But the Republican National Committee under chair Ronna McDaniel has become ever more radical and welcomes only those who pledge their full allegiance to Trump, and only Trump.

This was, after all, the party that failed to produce a platform in 2020, settling instead for a default policy of whatever Trump says.

For Republican representatives and senators—at least, those not named Majorie Taylor Greene or Josh Hawley — the attempt to punish Cheney and Kinzinger is far more frightening than the role those two Republicans play on the House select committee. That’s because the RNC action serves to underscore the fact that the current GOP is about Trump, and only Trump. It has no goals. It has no plans. It’s just involved in smacking down whoever fails to bow deeply enough this week.

And considering that Trump condemned Lindsey Graham as a “RINO” for opposing the idea of giving Jan. 6 defendants a blanket pardon, they all understand that anyone could find themselves in the crosshairs at any time. 

Not every Republican is anxious to do a Ted Cruz crawl.

On Friday, Sen. Mitt Romney tweeted his support for Cheney and Kinzinger, writing that “Honor attaches to Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger for seeking truth even when doing so comes at great personal cost.” He also wrote that “Shame falls on a party that would censure persons of conscience,” but he failed to mention either McDaniel  or Trump.

What’s worrying Republicans in D.C. is that their party has made supporting violent insurgency not just something they can ignore in the name of “moving on,” but a prerequisite of membership. That move is genuinely doing what the censure resolution claimed about Cheney and Kinzinger—creating a division in the party that endangers their efforts to capture the House in November.

Republican candidates are going to end up running in November not on some variant of “Biden is bad,” but having to actively endorse the idea that the Jan. 6 insurgency was good. The RNC is putting them in a position where they have no choice but to buy into Trump’s pardon offer if they want access to the resources and financial support of the party.

Republicans are now officially, objectively the pro-insurrection, pro-violence, pro-sedition party. After all, those claims about “ordinary citizens engaged in in legitimate political discourse” must surely include the members of the Oath Keepers who have been charged with seditious conspiracy, and whose plans for Jan. 6 included stationing massive caches of weapons and explosives just outside D.C.

On Friday afternoon, McDaniel altered the text of the resolution, changing that last section to read “a Democrat-led persecution of ordinary citizens who engaged in legitimate political discourse that had nothing to do with violence at the Capitol.” 

That, however, is not the resolution that members of the party voted on and passed.