Welcome to Beg to Differ, the Bullworks, weekly roundtable discussion featuring civil conversation

across the political spectrum. We range from center left to center right. I'm

Mona Charon's indicated columnist and policy editor at the Bullwerk and I am joined by some of our

regulars that is Damon Linker of the week and Linda Chavez of the Niskanin

Center sitting in for Bill Galston this week, we are happy to welcome

Norman Ornstein of AI and other places and our special guest this week is New York Times columnist Brett Stevens.

Welcome to all of you. I wish it were a better anniversary but it's an important

anniversary. Today is January 6th and as we speak

there are commemorations in the Congress about the events of that day and the first

thing to notice is that there was a moment of silence held on the floor of the Congress

to honor the police officers who died defending the capital and those who died afterwards.

And there were a number of Democrats in attendance and Speaker of the House, and there were only

two Republicans. Liz Cheney and her father, Dick Cheney, who of

course is no longer a member of that

body,

to commemorate this and to observe a moment of silence.

So let's start with Damon Linker.

Damon, does that tell you something about where we are?

Yeah, it tells us exactly where we are, which is on the far side of the I don't know three or four days following

the insurrection a year ago when it looked like reality might finally intrude on

what the Republican Party has become under Trump and then

it failed as it has failed at every prior moment where it seemed like reality might

...