There should be nothing surprising about this past Friday's official defense by the Republican National Committee of the Jan. 6, 2021, assault on the United States Capitol, one aimed at preventing the constitutionally mandated transfer of power central to our democracy from taking place. The GOP's proclamation that the assault constituted "ordinary citizens engaged in legitimate political discourse" was almost ho-hum for a party that has become America's Hezbollah, the militant Islamist party that subjugates Lebanon. Hezbollah means "Party of God" in Arabic. Substitute "former President Donald Trump" for "God" and you've got today's Republicans.

The mob's vicious, deadly attack on Capitol Police; its cries to hang a vice president who declined to declare that someone who had lost the election should be president; the seditious plotting of a paramilitary operation to seize power; and the felony- and fraud-filled scheme to keep Trump in power — all of this was the stuff of fascists. Yet the GOP has been worse than merely too cowardly to stand against this. Overwhelmingly, Republicans have embraced it.

"The Republican Party is so off the deep end that they are describing an attempted coup and a deadly insurrection as political expression," observed Rep. Jamie Raskin, a member of the House committee investigating the multifaceted putsch attempt organized by Trump and his kitchen cabinet of Mussolini-wannabes and simple wackadoodles. But, really, what else is new? The party of Ronald Reagan has turned itself toxic out of fealty to Trump and fear of him, even though he is the kind of crooked despot that Americans have always flattered ourselves into believing could never come to power here.

We were badly mistaken.

"From my front row seat, I did not see a lot of legitimate political discourse," remarked Marc Short, former Vice President Mike Pence's chief of staff. Pence was slated to be hanged from gallows pre-constructed by a mob that wanted him killed for refusing to declare Trump "still the president" even though the American people had voted otherwise. The good news: Only those suffering from "Trump-as-Fuehrer syndrome" believe this was "legitimate political discourse." The bad news: This syndrome has taken root more broadly than we once thought thinkable.

The occasion for Friday's declaration by the GOP was its vote to censure conservative Republican Reps. Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger, for whom conservatism does not mean defending sedition. The vote came just days after Trump excoriated Pence for refusing to "overturn the election" and after he indicated fairly clearly that if elected in 2024, he would pardon the insurrectionists. Cheney and Kinzinger have had the guts to face down their GOP colleagues, first by voting to impeach Trump for his role in the Jan. 6 coup attempt and then by agreeing to serve on the House committee seeking to ascertain the complete set of facts surrounding it. The censure vote was intended to punish them.

Neither Cheney nor Kinzinger is backing down an inch. "I do not recognize those in my party who have abandoned the Constitution to embrace Donald Trump," Cheney said. "History will be their judge." Kinzinger was equally resolute. "I have no regrets about my decision to uphold my oath of office and the Constitution," he said.

Pence has at long last summoned the fortitude to publicly criticize Trump, a mere 13 months after being threatened with a lynching by Trump's troops. "I had no right to overturn the election," Pence told the Federalist Society, a group of conservative legal scholars for whom this was presumably not news. "The presidency belongs to the American people. And frankly, there is no idea more un-American than the notion that any one person could choose the American president."

This should fall comfortably in the realm of Captain Obvious. But the GOP is now certifiably morally bankrupt, a stain on America's reputation abroad and a threat to her security at home. Not mincing words about it may not make a bit of difference. But mincing words is increasingly difficult to do.

Jeff Robbins, a former assistant United States attorney and United States delegate to the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva, was chief counsel for the minority of the United States Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations. An attorney specializing in the First Amendment, he is a longtime columnist for the Boston Herald, writing on politics, national security, human rights and the Mideast.

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