“Common sense is not that common.”—Voltaire

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Yup, it’s official, the Republican Party is dead!

The party of Lincoln, Reagan, Eisenhower, George H.W. Bush, and God Love ’em, John McCain, is dead from the neck up.

On Friday, the Republican National Committee censured (formerly condemned) Republican Representatives Adam Kinzinger and Liz Cheney who “chose to join Nancy Pelosi in a Democrat-led persecution of ordinary citizens who engaged in legitimate political discourse that had nothing to do with violence at the Capitol.”

Let me repeat what will go down in American History as one of the stupidest and most dangerous statements made by a national political committee responsible for setting the agenda for their party:

“…ordinary citizens who engaged in legitimate political discourse that had nothing to do with violence at the Capitol.”

Anyone who sincerely believes the people pictured above were “engaged in legitimate political discourse,” needs serious psychiatric help.

Last May, Senate Republicans blocked a plan to have an independent panel investigate the January 6, 2020 attack on the Capitol, the same type of panel that was instituted after the attacks on 9/11. Let me repeat that one: “an independent panel,” meaning no agenda, no bias.

Last July, after Nancy Pelosi, speaker of the House, rejected two Republicans McCarthy listed as five House members to join the committee—Jim Jordan of Ohio and Jim Banks of Indiana—McCarthy pulled all five Republicans from sitting on a bipartisan panel.

Pelosi had approved House Republicans Rodney Davis of Illinois, Kelly Armstrong of North Dakota and Troy Nehls of Texas even though Nehls sided with Banks, and Jordan in rejecting the certification of the 2020 presidential election.

But Bakersfield California’s “finest,” Kevin McCarthy said, Phffft, I’m pulling all of them!

“At every opportunity,” Liz Cheney said on the steps of the Capitol, “the minority leader has attempted to prevent the American people from understanding what happened, to block this investigation. … I am absolutely dedicated and committed to making sure this investigation holds those accountable who did this and ensures that it never happens again.”

Both Cheney and Kinzinger are in good company. The Arizona GOP censured Cindy McCain, wife of former Senator John McCain for failing to support Donald Trump in 2020.

“It is a high honor to be included in a group of Arizonans who have served our state and our nation so well … and who, like my late husband John, have been censured by the AZGOP. I’ll wear this as a badge of honor,” the 66-year-old widow of late Republican Senator John McCain wrote on Twitter.

“Shame falls on a party that would censure persons of conscience, who seek truth in the face of vitriol,” Senator Mitt Romney wrote on Twitter. “Honor attaches to Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger for seeking truth even when doing so comes at great personal cost.”

Republicans used to stand for things like fiscal responsibility, lower tax rates, smaller government. They were the very definition of conservative.

Now they stand for massive election fraud and conspiracies galore where no proof exists.

Seventy percent . . . 70 percent of Republicans believe that Joe Biden is not the legitimate winter of the 2020 election. 23 percent of Republicans believe that “government, media and the financial world in the U.S. are controlled by a group of Satan worshiping pedophiles who run a global child sex trafficking operation.”

Forty percent of Trump supporters fervently believe Q-Anon conspiracy theories and support violence.

Georgia “‘passed a law in 2021 that says, in part, no one shall give “any money or gifts, including, but not limited to, food and drink’ within 25 feet of voters standing in line. Violations of this law are a misdemeanor and punishable by up to a year in jail and a $1,000 fine.”

Republicans have morphed into the definition of the extremist political right.

Now, because Republicans Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger sit on a panel seeking the truth behind the most egregious violent crime of more than 100 years, “the Republican National Committee hereby formally censures Representatives Liz Cheney of Wyoming and Adam Kinzinger of Illinois and shall immediately cease any and all support of them as members of the Republican Party for their behavior which has been destructive to the institution of the U.S. House of Representatives, the Republican Party and our republic, and is inconsistent with the position of the Conference.”

History will record that this was the era Republicans lost their moral compass. Correction: they no longer know what a moral compass is much less think it’s important.

If Democrats, Independents and those Republicans who know the truth do not hold these lawmakers and influencers accountable; if they don’t aggressively rally supporters for the upcoming election; if legislators in battleground states succeed in the courts in allowing blatant voter suppression, the country is in for a long, dark winter of discontent.