@snood,
Quote:I don’t understand why he should still be eliciting fear to the point that it makes all the Republican lawmakers so pathetically silent and dickless.
I'd suggest two answers. One - they desperately want wins in the Georgia Senate contests. Holding the Senate allows maximal obstruction of Biden while losing it seriously diminishes what they can get up to. When those two elections are over, much will change.
Two - Trump will likely for some while have significant control over the base he's developed and that has electoral consequences across the boards for Republicans remaining in office. This is an old game that people like Rove pioneered while in the College Republicans - enforce extremism through working to rid the party of moderates and "RINOs". If you don't go along, you'll get primaried out of power and you probably won't find work anywhere in GOP circles again.
How long Trump might be able to keep pulling this off is unknown. As is how hard he'll try and how he'll go about it. As wealth is the base of all else he does and as he's clearly understood for some long while that modern Republicanism is a very successful scam more than anything else, he may well see his best future continuing this game.
All of this is, of course, dependent on future legal actions against him and the consequences of those actions.