Opinion | Will new revelations about Trump and Jan. 6 move GOP voters? A grim

By contrast, this poll finds that 75 percent of GOP primary voters believe Trump was “just exercising his right to contest the election.” Trump employed extraordinary corruption and mob violence in an effort to destroy our political order, and by 75-to-19, GOP voters say this was perfectly within the bounds of democratic conduct.

If the Jan. 6 House select committee hopes to create a kind of breakthrough moment of broad bipartisan consensus — that the conduct of Trump and his coup-plotters was fundamentally unacceptable in a democracy — then that poll finding is a dark reminder that this won’t happen.

And yet, if a sliver of GOP voters out there is persuadable on this point, that might be an opening. It dangles at least the possibility that the pro-democracy majority can be broadened a bit here and there, in strategic ways that could make a difference on the margins.

The revelations at Tuesday’s committee hearing should make it impossible to cling to the lie that in trying to subvert his loss, Trump was merely exercising his legal options. That’s because the hearing will include videotaped testimony given to the committee by Trump’s White House counsel, Pat Cipollone.

We don’t know exactly what Cipollone testified to behind closed doors. But the committee says he provided information that’s “highly relevant” to Trump’s misconduct on nearly every front.

Remember, Cipollone warned against many of Trump’s most corrupt moves. Those include pressure on the Justice Department to manufacture impressions of a fraudulent election, efforts to use fake electors to game the presidential electoral count in Congress, and pressure on his vice president to subvert that count.

Cipollone also reportedly warned that Trump and others in his circle could be legally vulnerable if they joined paramilitary groups Trump mobilized at the Capitol. Tuesday’s hearing will illuminate Trump’s role in animating those groups, and the degree to which he expressly used mob intimidation to pressure reluctant actors to complete his procedural coup.

In short, it’s impossible to square this bottomless corruption and seeming embrace of political violence with the notion that Trump innocently sought to exercise his legal options. Yet only the tiniest slice of GOP voters appears open to that argument.

A useful explanation of all this comes from Sarah Longwell, a Never Trump GOP strategist who conducts focus groups of Republican voters. The Times reports that Longwell’s group, the Republican Accountability PAC, will spend at least $10 million in the midterms to defeat GOP candidates who are essentially running on Trump’s…