The sad fact is that the responsible Republicans who tried -- Liz Cheney, Adam Kinzinger, Jeff Flake, Rusty Bowers, et al. -- were all promptly drummed out of the party.

The MAGA movement is a groundswell from below, fueled by the racism that was never snuffed out by the Civil Rights Movement, by the xenophobia that has always been a deep undercurrent in American politics, by the misogyny and tribalism that draws support from religious fundamentalism, and by the violent strains of American culture that are played like a fiddle by the NRA gun manufacturer lobby.

It only took one shameless demagogue to emerge to shake the can to release this pent-up pressure into our public life, but it's going to take a lot more people than a few party leaders to clean up the spew of hatred that is sticking to the walls of our politics and institutions.