| Get Jonathan Bernstein's newsletter every morning in your inbox. Click here to subscribe. You want to know something really depressing? Now is the time when Republicans have the least to fear from former President Donald Trump. There's more than a year to go until the 2022 midterm elections, and at least 10 months until the primaries for those elections. Trump left office at one of his low points in popularity. Sure, most Republican voters still like him — as most Republicans like most Republican politicians (other than congressional leaders, who are almost always unpopular). Not only that, but Trump's electoral defeat is still fairly recent news. If there was ever a time to move away from him, it's now. That, of course, is not what's happening. Just in the last few days, angry Utah Republicans hooted at Senator Mitt Romney, who voted to remove Trump from office after his impeachment trials. Over in the House of Representatives, Republican Conference Chair Liz Cheney of Wyoming is apparently in danger (again) of losing her leadership post because she insists on accurately saying that Joe Biden legitimately won the 2020 presidential election. And believing — or at least pretending to believe — Trump's fantastic lies about nonexistent voting fraud is increasingly the central belief Republican elected officials must share. My guess is that this has little to do with Trump. Republican complaints about fictional election fraud were central to their legislative agenda in state after state well before Trump's 2016 campaign. It's true that the specifics of that agenda have shifted somewhat in response to Trump's whining. What that shows more than anything, however, is that attempts to hijack elections may only be the secondary motive for these laws; the primary reason for them is for Republican elected officials to convince their strongest supporters that they are doing their best to repress Democrats and various Democratic groups. That's why fictional election fraud is such a good issue for many Republicans right now. Opposing Biden and the Democratic legislative agenda, after all, would tend to unite the party. But a united Republican Party is the last thing that Republican radicals want. They need enemies; they need apostates they can label "Republicans in name only" to prove that they are the true conservatives. The Jan. 6 Capitol riot and Trump's continuing lies are so obviously an attack on the Constitution, the rule of law and the American republic that Republicans such as Romney and Cheney refused to go along. For the radicals, that's exactly the kind of opportunity they rarely fail to exploit. It's possible, but unlikely, that any of this will seriously damage Republicans in 2022 and 2024. Elections tend to ride on what voters think about incumbents, not challengers. There is a slim possibility that the party will split and make itself unelectable. And there's a somewhat greater chance that it will wind up throwing away a handful of elections by nominating candidates who run well behind what a generic candidate would do, as it's done repeatedly over the last decade. For the most part, however, the out-party's actions don't have much to do with its electoral success. The real damage continues to be to the party's capacity to govern when it does win. And, even more seriously, to the party's commitment to core democratic beliefs and procedures. Depressing, indeed — and scary. 1. Barry C. Burden, Julia Nestel, and Rochelle Snyder at Mischiefs of Faction on uncontested state legislative elections. 2. Also from Mischiefs: Seth Masket on the California gubernatorial recall effort. 3. Kathryn Dunn Tenpas on the Biden administration's diversity after 100 days. 4. James Wallner on Democrats and the filibuster. 5. Perry Bacon Jr. on the divisions over ethnicity in U.S politics. 6. Katherine Tully-McManus on upcoming (and badly needed) efforts to increase staff pay on Capitol Hill. 7. And Fred Kaplan on Biden's policy towards North Korea. Get Early Returns every morning in your inbox. Click here to subscribe. Also subscribe to Bloomberg All Access and get much, much more. You'll receive our unmatched global news coverage and two in-depth daily newsletters, the Bloomberg Open and the Bloomberg Close. | 
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