Interesting? It will be terrible.
It is terrible how the Republicans allowed the extreme right in their party to grow further and further. The extreme right will feel encouraged by Trump's acquittal and will continue to support him. The extreme right all over the world will come out into the open more and more, showing their racism, conspiracy theories, lies and hate. More violence can be expected.
I agree with this, but I also don’t want to shut out the possibility that this causes the GOP to split, which would ultimately be good for the country and great for the progressive left. 10 republicans in the house and 7 in the senate supported impeachment. These are small numbers, but suppose a new party emerges to run against these folks in their respective states. Republicans barely win these swing states to begin with, a spoiler candidate will cripple them electorally. Furthermore, if Trump starts to primary “moderate” Republicans in places like PA and NC, that’s going to be a huge liability. We already saw an element of this in Georgia. The general election in 2020 became a race for who could be the most extremist right winger and it ended up costing them the runoff.
We’re going to have to see what happens in 2022, but I think in the long run we’re going to find that Trump was more of a liability for the radical right than an asset. Republicans were able to use dog whistles and appeal to racists and extremists without actually going there for decades, now the genie is out of the bottle and people are being forced to pick sides. Meanwhile, the democrats are holding a very slim caucus together and might make real political and electoral progress.