I sure hope this isn’t in the form of a request.

The message should be: Withdraw your objections or your mob-inciting asses will be expelled.

If there were a good-faith dispute over who’d won states like Georgia and Pennsylvania, that would be one thing. Trump’s mob storming the Capitol wouldn’t be grounds for handing the election to Biden as punishment. But there is no dispute. Biden won. The votes were certified. The electoral college voted. There’s no “Trump slate of electors” recognized by any legislature in a state that he lost. Hawley even admitted this morning that the votes aren’t there in Congress to actually block certification of any state’s results.

This was a stunt. And it’s now a stunt with a body count.

If the two of them and the rest of the coup caucus can’t abort a futile self-serving political pageant that helped incite a terrorist attack in hopes of ending this nightmare before it gets worse, they have no business being in Congress. Send them home. Rudely.

Republican lawmakers are pressing the Trump loyalists in their party to abandon their objections to President-elect Joe Biden’s win as lawmakers huddle in an undisclosed location Wednesday afternoon to wait out the siege of the Capitol, according to multiple people familiar with the effort.

The intervention from Republicans is focused on the GOP lawmakers who have been spearheading the electoral college challenges, including Sens. Josh Hawley (Mo.) and Ted Cruz (Tex.). Republicans eager to end the standoff are exerting similar pressure on the president’s supporters in the House, as leaders try to work out how they can bring the certification process to a swift end, while lawmakers remain unable to reenter the Capitol.

According to one person familiar with the objectors’ thinking, the effort is working. Trump’s supporters are acutely aware, the person said, that it would be untenable to continue their objections once the session is resumed, even if they have yet to admit it and formally withdraw their complaints.

That’s Cruz’s and Hawley’s well-deserved reward for jerking off a mob. If they back down now, plenty of MAGA types will consider them weak-kneed traitors to the cause of overturning the election, bullied into submission by RINOs. If they don’t back down, the optics of them continuing to try to overturn the result in the wake of a terror attack will ruin them in the eyes of swing voters to they extent they haven’t been ruined already. They tried to ride the tiger and they’re going to end up getting eaten. Enjoy it, boys.

Congress absolutely should go back into session tonight. If that means 3 a.m., so be it. Don’t let the gang-leader-in-chief and his terror cell disrupt national business:

More news —> McConnell is telling members they should go back into the chamber tonight to project strength after today’s catastrophe, per two senior GOP sources familiar with his message

— Seung Min Kim (@seungminkim) January 6, 2021

"…we have decided we should proceed tonight at the Capitol once it is cleared for use," declares @SpeakerPelosi in fresh statement. pic.twitter.com/TnH3fdqK7Z

— Steve Herman (@W7VOA) January 6, 2021

The Ghost of Republicans Past appeared this evening and called today’s attack an “insurrection,” which he didn’t mean as a compliment but is kinder to the people involved than it should be. An insurrection can have noble motives. This was terrorism by QAnon cranks and their fellow travelers.

Statement from former Pres. George W. Bush: pic.twitter.com/Vgqp8trwIx

— Geoff Bennett (@GeoffRBennett) January 6, 2021

The Ghost of Republicans Present weighed in too. Mitt Romney is done pulling his punches even a little bit, per the remarks he intended to give today:

“We gather today due to a selfish man’s injured pride and the outrage of his supporters whom he has deliberately misinformed for the past two months and stirred to action this very morning. What happened here today was an insurrection, incited by the President of the United States. Those who choose to continue to support his dangerous gambit by objecting to the results of a legitimate, democratic election will forever be seen as being complicit in an unprecedented attack against our democracy. They will be remembered for their role in this shameful episode in American history. That will be their legacy.

“The objectors have claimed they are doing so on behalf of the voters. Have an audit, they say, to satisfy the many people who believe that the election was stolen. Please! No Congressional led audit will ever convince those voters, particularly when the President will continue to claim that the election was stolen. The best way we can show respect for the voters who are upset is by telling them the truth. That is the burden, and the duty, of leadership. The truth is that President-elect Biden won this election. President Trump lost. Scores of courts, the President’s own Attorney General, and state election officials both Republican and Democrat have reached this unequivocal decision.

“We must not be intimidated or prevented from fulfilling our constitutional duty. We must continue with the count of electoral college votes. In light of today’s sad circumstances, I ask my colleagues: Do we weigh our own political fortunes more heavily than we weigh the strength of our Republic, the strength of our democracy, and the cause of freedom? What is the weight of personal acclaim compared to the weight of conscience?

“Leader McConnell said that the vote today is the most important in his 40 plus years of public service. That is not because this vote reveals something about the election; it is because this vote reveals something about ourselves. I urge my colleagues to move forward with completing the electoral count, to refrain from further objections, and to unanimously affirm the legitimacy of the presidential election.”

“They will be remembered for their role in this shameful episode in American history. That will be their legacy.” So it will. I wonder if Cruz, Hawley, and the scores of MAGA stooges in the House realize it yet.

I think there’s less suspense right now as to whether the objections to certification will be dropped — they will — than whether Congress will take up impeachment tomorrow. I doubt either Pelosi or McConnell wants to do that with 14 days to go. This is a moment for lowering the temperature, not raising it further. But Trump is unstable and we still have two long weeks before he’s out of office — and even then, he’ll retain his power to incite his followers as a private citizen. Maybe McConnell will dial him up tonight to say, “I have the votes in the Senate to remove you. Do we need to hold that trial or are you prepared to take off for Mar-a-Lago tomorrow?”

That might be a bluff. Even now, it’s unclear whether 19 Republicans would be willing to remove. But I guarantee that this time there’ll be more than just Mitt Romney voting to oust him. In fact, given the perverse willingness of parts of Trump’s personality cult to support him no matter what, even after today’s travesty, McConnell may feel *obliged* to try to remove him in order to bar him from running again in 2024. I was thinking yesterday that, apart from Adam Kinzinger, I haven’t seen or heard a single person who voted for him say, “I supported him in November but now, in light of the past two months, I regret it.” Not one. Not even randos on Twitter. The Georgia election officials whom he’s demagogued relentlessly have gone out of their way to call themselves proud Republicans in interviews. Brad Raffensperger, who’s wife has been threatened with death because of Trump’s incitement against her husband, was asked over the weekend whether he’d consider voting for the president again in 2024 and wouldn’t. f***ing. rule. it. out.

One can wish that today’s spectacle would have been enough to make him unelectable in the future. But if this party had a functioning sense of civic duty, he never would have been nominated in the first place.

Here’s McConnell fully divorcing himself from Trump and Trumpism this morning, sometimes in emotional terms. Mitch might be ready for removal.