Jonathan Chait: “‘Never Trump’ was a label embraced by a handful of Republicans who deemed Donald Trump disqualified for office by some combination of his ignorance, his mendacity, his bigotry, and/or his authoritarianism. Almost no one still affiliated with the party or the conservative movement willingly uses the label any more. The label has largely been repurposed by Trump himself as an epithet against any Republican who dares utter criticism of him, however mild. “Never Trump” now serves essentially the same role in right-wing discourse as ‘Trotskyite’ did in Stalin’s Russia — an all-purpose accusation of secret disloyalties, which must be fervently disavowed.”

“In place of Never Trumpism, the Biden-era Republican party offers up figures like Chris Christie. Christie has put himself forward as the face of Republican resistance to Trump. But it is a form of ‘resistance’ so tepid as to become almost indistinguishable from support.”

“The Republican National Committee is paying some personal legal bills for former president Donald Trump, spending party funds to pay a lawyer representing Trump in investigations into his financial practices in New York,” the Washington Post reports.

“There has been no indication that either investigation involves Trump’s time as president, or any of his political campaigns.”

Jennifer Rubin: “While it’s true that the country is more deeply divided along partisan lines than it has been in the past, it is wrong to suggest a symmetrical devolution into irrational hatred. The polarization argument too often treats both sides as equally worthy of blame, characterizing the problem as a sort of free-floating affliction (e.g., ‘lack of trust’).”

“This blurs the distinction between a Democratic Party that is marginally more progressive in policy positions than it was a decade ago, and a Republican Party that routinely lies, courts violence and seeks to define America as a White Christian nation.”

New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu (R) said the Republican party’s vilification of members of Congress who have criticized Donald Trump or supported bipartisan legislation is “ruining America,” The Guardian reports.

Said Sununu: “That’s kind of that social media mob mentality that’s built up in this country where we don’t agree with one issue so we’re going to attack them, we’re going to vilify one person or one individual. We’ve got to get beyond that, because culturally, it’s really, really ruining America.”

He also specifically noted that House Republicans “have their priorities screwed up.”

“As the country’s Republican governors met this week, there was an unmistakable air of celebration in the conference rooms and cocktail parties marking their annual postelection conference. Gov.-elect Glenn Youngkin of Virginia was swarmed with well wishers and favor seekers who believed his victory in a liberal-leaning state offered the party a road map for next year’s midterm elections,” the New York Times reports.

“Out of earshot of the reporters and donors congregating amid the palm trees and cactuses of the Arizona Biltmore resort, however, a more sober, less triumphant and all-too-familiar conversation was taking place among the governors: What could be done about Donald Trump?”

Michelle Cottle: “How upbeat is the Republican Party about its prospects for taking control of the House and Senate next year? So upbeat that it apparently is cool with the fact that in three Senate races — Georgia, Missouri and Pennsylvania — it has leading candidates who have been accused of harassing, abusing, threatening or otherwise mistreating women.”

“Once upon a time, this situation likely would have provoked a major display of concern, or at least an attempt at damage control, by the Republican establishment. Instead many party officials are brushing off related questions like pesky bits of dryer fluff.”

“While the particulars of these cases vary — the allegations, the candidates’ responses, the warmth of the party’s embrace — the creeping not-so-casual misogyny is indicative of the dark path down which former President Donald Trump continues to lead the G.O.P.”

David Brooks: “Over the past few decades there have been various efforts to replace the Reagan Paradigm: the national-greatness conservatism of John McCain; the compassionate conservatism of George W. Bush; the Reformicon conservatism of the D.C. think tanks in the 21st century.”

“But the Trumpian onslaught succeeded where these movements have so far fizzled because Trump understood better than they did the coalescence of the new American cultural/corporate elite and the potency of populist anger against it. Thus the display of Ivy League populism I witnessed in Orlando might well represent the alarming future of the American right: the fusing of the culture war and the class war into one epic Marxist Götterdämmerung.”

Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) spoke to Charlie Sykes on the Bulwark podcast on his new book, Midnight in Washington:

“I wanted to write the book because there had been a lot written about the Trump White House by people who had left that White House, but not very much written about what was going on in Congress: Why so many people in the Republican Party ended up betraying their ideology, their values, their belief system, their morality, in the service of this unethical man, and I wanted to write about how that happens.”

“And you know, what I learned all too painfully was, it happens one day at a time, one small concession at a time in the beginning, one small lie, followed by a demand for a bigger lie and a bigger concession, a bigger moral lapse, followed by another until you know, these folks that I admired and respected, because I believe that they believe what they were saying, had given themselves up so completely to Donald Trump and his immorality.”

RNC Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel said she “obviously” still considers Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY) to be a member of the party after the Wyoming GOP voted to no longer recognize the congresswoman Republican, The Hill reports.

Donald Trump’s Save America PAC is out with a new ad urging Republicans to vote out 13 congressional Republicans who are “RINOs, sellouts and losers.”

“The Wyoming Republican Party will no longer recognize Liz Cheney as a member of the GOP in its second formal rebuke for her criticism of former President Donald Trump,” the AP reports.

“Cheney is now facing at least four Republican opponents in the 2022 primary.”