The danger of such extreme right-wing partisanship is its endless capacity to turn standard political grudges—against Democrats’ hypocrisy on executive overreach, for example, or the media’s liberal bias—into an apologia for more egregious rule-breaking. Partisan Republicans accuse their opponents of doing the same thing, and offer examples to prove it. But just as the right has played an outsized role in driving partisanship generally (a dynamic termed “asymmetric polarisation”), so its rule-breaking is more conspicuous and arguably worse. The Democrats’ record on gerrymandering is dire; Republican attempts to suppress non-white voter turnout are a terrible stain. They also hint at a gloomily defensive apprehension, which has no counterpart on the ascendant left, that a Republican Party backed by a shrinking minority of mostly white voters cannot win power by fair means.
It seems many Republican voters have already settled on that conclusion—though they would put it slightly differently. Shortly after Mr Trump’s election, two in three agreed with the statement that America needed a leader “willing to break some rules if that’s what it takes to set things right.” Mr Trump’s current standing with his party suggests even more would agree with it now. When articles of impeachment against Mr Trump are presented to them, Republican senators will essentially be asked whether they do, too. Their answer will decide more than the president’s fate. It will determine whether theirs is now the party of rule-breaking.