WASHINGTON — The House Select Committee on the Jan. 6 Attack on the Capitol continues effectively to serve its purpose in documenting Donald Trump’s destructive role in the insurrection that cost American lives and threatened our democratic concept of self-government.

With meticulous investigation into the assault by Trump and his acolytes, the congressional hearings have left no room for doubt that the former president was out to reverse his 2020 loss of the Oval Office by any possible means.

Witnesses, including members of the paramilitary Oath Keepers committed to his illegal power grab, testified to his ruthless efforts, as committee prosecutors mostly eschewed grandstanding in soberly making the case against him.

Some such witnesses rather sheepishly owned up to their own gullibility to Trump’s Big Lie about the supposedly stolen election, as the committee members plowed through the convincing evidence against him.

One immediate defense offered by Republicans for Trump was that he relied on aides who never got through to him that he really had lost in 2020. In the end, however, he has been exposed as the narcissistic self-server with little concern for the rule of law or the Constitution to which he was obliged to pledge as president.

The questions now remaining are, first, whether this nation can recover and shore up its laws and institutions to protect against a second such “soft” coup attempt. One step toward that recovery is for all those guilty, including Trump himself if convicted in a court, to be punished for their misdeeds.

Another question is whether the Republican Party, which has descended into little more than an association of unprincipled Trumpites, can regain its traditional conservative bearings and show him the exit door. The committee hearings Tuesday offered brief glimmers of contrition. In a text the committee publicized, Brad Pascale, the man who ran the digital operations for Trump’s presidential campaigns, confessed, “I feel guilty for helping him.” Yet such private thoughts, often shared by the disgraced ex-president’s aides among themselves, have only rarely translated into public disavowals.

The committee made a convincing case that Trump himself created the conditions that led to deadly violence in the assault on the Capitol. He tweeted from the White House weeks earlier: “Big protest in D.C. on January 6th. Be there; will be wild!” This tweet, argued Democratic Rep. Jamie Raskin of Maryland, ”would galvanize his followers, unleash a political firestorm and change the course of our history as a country.”

Such was the cult of personality surrounding Trump — nurtured by a willing caucus of Republicans in the House and Senate, connived at by other Republicans who lacked the courage to stand up to a man they knew was recklessly leading the U.S. to possible disaster — that millions of Americans would believe the Big Lie, and that thousands would attack the very heart of our constitutional republic.

The Republican Party desperately needs a leader to bring it back to sanity and moderation. Indeed, Reps. Liz Cheney of Wyoming and Adam Kinzinger of Illinois have shown themselves to be paragons of principle in their work with the select committee. But for their trouble they have been all but drummed out of the party.

A theoretical senior leader is the most recent party standard-bearer, Utah Sen. Mitt Romney, who has limited political clout as a name from the past. Other rising stars, Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri, is regarded nervously as a budding Joe McCarthy, and is notorious for pumping his fist in approbation of the crowd that had gathered to storm the Capitol on Jan. 6. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis is widely seen as a rival for the 2024 GOP presidential nomination, but he is cut from the same cloth as Trump.

So the future of the Republican Party seems up for grabs when survival of the American two-party system itself is uncertain. This much is certain: The Republican Party isn’t ready for reform. Not yet, anyway.

Jules Witcover’s latest book is “The American Vice Presidency: From Irrelevance to Power,” published by Smithsonian Books. You can respond to this column at juleswitcover@comcast.net.

Newsletter