"Republicans' tolerance, if not active support, for President Trump's ongoing bid to overturn the 2020 election has crystallized a stark question: Does the GOP still qualify as a small-d democratic party--or is it morphing into something very different?"

"Even with the Supreme Court still deciding whether to consider a last-ditch legal effort to invalidate the results from the key swing states, there appears little chance that Trump will succeed in subverting Joe Biden's victory. But Trump's failure on that front has obscured his success at enlisting a growing swath of his party to join his cause--a dynamic that is already prompting new Republican efforts to make it more difficult to vote and raising concerns about the party's commitment to the basic tenets of Western democratic rules and conventions, including the peaceful transfer of power."

"Republicans' widespread enlistment in Trump's efforts follows years in which officials have advanced hundreds of state-level measures making it more difficult to vote; engaged in extraordinary legislative maneuvering to deny former President Barack Obama the opportunity to fill a vacant U.S. Supreme Court seat; and have either looked the other way or abetted Trump in a series of actions shredding democratic norms, including attempting to weaponize the Postal Service, tilt the results of the census, and pressure the Justice Department to investigate his opponents."

Regarding the Texas Voter Nullification

Dear ---,

Well, aren't you special, trying to overthrow a legitimate election through an act of sedition. Since you think (on no bases of fact) that the electoral process is SO obviously corrupt in this country, I'm sure you are willing to give up your seat in Congress until we can straighten out this parlous situation. Is that right?

You know what? You don't represent me or the district or our glorious State. You represent the obscenity that is the Republican Party. Go to hell. And shame on you.

"Multiple House lawmakers, including the top Democrat and Republican on the House Armed Services Committee, have said they will cut their holiday short if necessary to override a veto by President Donald Trump of the National Defense Authorization Act," CNN reports.

The reaction will be interesting.  As far as a split party, yes.

"President Trump's staunchest defenders on Capitol Hill are urging him not to concede even after President-elect Joe Biden wins the Electoral College vote next week, calling on their party's leader to fight for his unsubstantiated claims of widespread election fraud all the way to the House floor in January," CNN reports.

"The view of Trump's defenders is at odds with that of many top congressional Republicans, including leaders of the Senate, who believe the election will be over next Monday when electors cast their votes and make Biden's win official -- even though the Democrat's victory in the presidential race has been clear for weeks."

Also there are many, many, in the MAGAverse who absolutely believe Trump won and that he will be president for another term.

They, the ones not lost in Trumpland who have to run statewide, have got to be hating this.

Plus, Tom Cotton for one has no intention of stepping aside for Cheeto.  And they will be others.  

But from my own perspective, the devolution of Republican politics into a paranoid and perpetual right-wing search-and-destroy mission likely began back in 1968 with Richard Nixon's ascendancy to the White House, which coincided with (a) the back-to-back assassinations of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and Sen. Robert Kennedy, which effectively kneecapped the liberal movement at a critical juncture in our country's journey; and (b) a newfound affinity of ultra-conservative Dixiecrats for Nixon's GOP.

Nixon, of course, operated with absolutely no personal regard for legal, moral and ethical boundaries as either candidate or president, which as you noted earlier is a character trait long admired by people predisposed toward authoritarianism. In that light, it's rather telling that even when the Watergate scandal finally took Nixon down in August 1974, roughly two-thirds of self-identified Republicans still supported him.