“Better late than never” is usually true— and yet late is still *late,* not on time.

Everyone who is starting *now* to break with Trump, resign from his administration, enforce rules against him, or distance themselves from the Cruz-Hawley insurrection caucus is late.
1/

It’s really very important that there be more to the Republican Party going forward than the Trump family and the Cruz-Hawley insurrection caucus.

It’s much, much better that McConnell made the speech he did than if he had joined the insurrection caucus.
2/

It’s better that the insincere opportunists like Nikki Haley and Lindsey Graham are starting to signal “the winds are pointing in a non-Trumpy direction now. The path for opportunists does not lie with Trump, Trump Jr, or insurrection.
3/

It’s better that Mike Pence and a bunch of GOP members of Congress are pissed that Trump put them directly in harm’s way (and didn’t care that he was doing so, at all) than if they were feigning an eagerness to martyr themselves to Trump’s autogolpe.
4/

It’s better for the dam to break and for every White House staffer and political appointee to start publicly trying to clear their names by pretending to have always opposed than insanity than for a conspiracy of silence to keep up the pretence that it’s been sane.
5/

At the same time, “too little, too late” also has truth in it. Anyone who was still serving in the administration without public complaint on Election Day, to say nothing of on Cruz-Hawley insurrection day, bears some responsibility for what happened.
6/

Every Senator who voted against calling witnesses during the impeachment trial and then voted for acquittal bears some responsibility for the whole last year.
7/

But those people still exist and many of them are still in positions of power; some of the rest are in positions of influence; and it’s *very bad* if they all think “I’ve already tied myself to Trump for the rest of my life so might as well keep going.”
8/

On Here there’s a strong urge to say, of any Trump-enabler now declining to join the Cruz-Hawley insurrection caucus, “it’s too late, you own all this, don’t try to protect your reputations now,” and that’s part of the truth, but prospectively it can’t be *all* of it.
9/

Different judgments will apply in different contexts.

Am I ever going to want to shake Mitch McConnell’s hand? No.

Do I hope Schumer is negotiating with him as a colleague to get as much as can be gotten out of impeachment? Yes.

No real conclusion, but /fin.