"I don't know about unity. I would say, it’s more of a forced unity."

Jeff Timmer, a former chairman of the Michigan GOP who backed Biden last fall, said that rather than representing the mainstream GOP, the group of 17 Republicans “are the extremists in the party.”

“It’s the Marjorie Taylor Greenes and Matt Gaetzes and Jim Jordans and these local party and state party organizations censuring the folks who stood against the insurrection, stood for the Constitution and the rule of law — they are the mainstream,” he said. “And this talk of a serious divide in the Republican Party, it just isn’t real.”…

“I don’t know about unity. I would say, it’s more of a forced unity,” Don Thrasher, chair of Kentucky’s Nelson County GOP and a leader in efforts to condemn McConnell, told NBC News, adding that if the people Trump named in his CPAC address don’t come out and support him, “I think they probably will be removed at some point.”