First among them at present is that the House Republican caucus is, at the highest levels, infected by a cynical politics of deception, having just elevated one of the election-conspiracy peddlers to the No. 3 spot in its hierarchy. These were not just any deceptions, but deceptions calculated to thwart the constitutional transition of presidential power. (So please spare me the whole “you’d better be equally upset about the George Floyd riots” retort. Rioting is rioting. This is about a failed coup attempt, and the man who made it, and the rewarding of someone who helped him lay the ground for it, and the caucus that wants everyone to forget it ever happened even though the mastermind refuses to let us. Nor has anything since the Senate trial provided any reason to change our view of Trump. Yes, yes, the Sicknick medical report. I know. Ashli Babbitt is not available to be consoled.) It’s hard to believe that this would be happening if Trump had been barred from seeking office again. I’m sure he’d still be lashing out between his golf rounds, but as a political contender he’d be finished, the public would know it, and the GOP as a whole would have no reason not to move on. And even if this particular zombie contagion spreads no farther, it doesn’t take much imagination to see how someday things might be worse. Every lie Trump entrenches, and every surrender of integrity he elicits from some politician who proves herself unworthy of her office, sets down a practical precedent for future unscrupulous politicians to apply.