Rodney King on LA riots: You can't fight violence with violence

It took a little longer for the inevitable post-election Republican implosion than might have been expected. Perhaps they were exhausted from all the excitement of witnessing a historic violent insurrection or maybe they are just aimless without former President Donald Trump's Twitter feed to guide them. It's possible they were a little bit gun-shy since people are being investigated for committing sedition all over the country after their assault on the U.S. Capitol on January 6th. Whatever the reason, the normally voluble Republicans went uncharacteristically quiet for a few days during Joe Biden's Inauguration week. That silence ended over the weekend after two state Republican parties decided it was time to deal with the traitors in their midst.

In Arizona, the party reelected Kelli Ward — a Trump fanatic who lost her bid for the GOP nomination to the Senate in 2018— as the state chairman and her first order of business was to offer a censure motion against a raft of prominent Republicans, including former Senator Jeff Flake, Cindy McCain, the wife of former Senator John McCain and sitting Governor Steve Ducey, all for the crime of failing to be properly loyal to Donald Trump. The first two are vocal critics and didn't vote for Trump, but Gov. Ducey has been a loyal minion whose only crime was refusing to break the law and somehow give Donald Trump more votes in the election.

On Monday, The Guardian quoted a former senior aide to Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY), suggesting that he may be ready to convict former President Donald Trump in the upcoming impeachment trial for incitement of insurrection.

"Everybody who's spent anytime watching his career knows that at the end of the day he's an institutionalist. In the darkest days of the post-election period the institutions did their jobs," said the aide. "The courts did their job, even the Trump appointed judges and he made doggone sure that the Senate is going to do its job. Of course when the riots happened he made sure that they're going to come back and finish the job. And I think that he's viewing it through that lens here. If you can't say that leaving an armed insurrection against one body – one branch of government it is an impeachable offense, shame on you."

On Monday, confirming reports initially circulating on Sunday evening, former Trump White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders released a video announcing her candidacy for governor of Arkansas, loaded to the brim with red meat for the pro-Trump base.

"I took on the media, the radical left, and their 'cancel culture,' and I won," Sanders said in the video. "As governor, I will be your voice, and never let them silence you."