One year ago, many prominent Republicans predicted Trump’s behavior on and ahead of Jan. 6 would relegate him to the fringes of the right, shaming the GOP back into the mainstream. Instead, the opposite has happened. When Trump speaks, he will set the table for a midterm election year with him firmly at the Republican Party’s center.

“It’s become almost a religion in the Republican Party,” said Jason Shepherd, the former Cobb County, Ga., GOP chair, who resigned from his local party after it voted to censure Republican Gov. Brian Kemp, one of Trump’s political enemies. “You have your believers, and you have your heretics, and anyone who isn’t willing to follow Trump 100 percent, or wants to question Trump, that’s now the new definition of a RINO“ (Republican in Name Only)…

“It’s extraordinary,” said Ralph Reed, the Republican strategist and founder of the Faith & Freedom Coalition. “You could make the argument that he’s in a stronger position within the Republican Party today than he perhaps ever has been.”

“In many ways,” Reed continued, with Republican candidates across the country all clamoring for Trump’s endorsement, “the party may be moving in a more conservative, more populist and more Trumpian direction with him out of office” than if he had been reelected.