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So it looks like they’ve finally found their red line.

That is, the Republican Party. On Tuesday, the GOP appears to have finally identified the barrier that no Republican can be allowed to cross. Many of us had wondered where it was – or even if it was. We were sincerely, if morbidly, curious to know what it would take for the party to reprimand one of its own. Now, thanks to the election and, more specifically, the defeat of Madison Cawthorn, the future former representative from North Carolina, we have our answer.

The red line is this: don’t embarrass the GOP.

It’s okay if you embrace a white supremacist theory like Rep. Elise Stefanik.

It’s okay if you’re anti-Semitic like Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene.

It’s fine if you support the insurgency like Senator Josh Hawley.

Don’t embarrass the party.

You could say that any or all of the above should embarrass the party. But this argument misinterprets the Zeitgeist.

Consider Cawthorn’s catalog of impolitic behavior: He twice brought loaded guns to the airport; he was shown on one video shoving his bare genitals into another man’s face, and on another partying in lingerie; he was charged with sexual harassment; he apparently called for the violent overthrow of the US government. His controversies ranged from kink to outright sedition, touching several bases in between, but none of them raised more than a mild rebuke within the party. Not so with a podcast from March in which he inexplicably claimed to have been invited to cocaine-fueled orgies by his colleagues.

It is, said House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, that Cawthorn “lost my confidence.” It was also when Thom Tillis, a senator from his state, endorsed his main challenger. That’s when a member of the House Freedom Caucus anonymously told Politico about the reactions “across the political spectrum. . . saying ‘What is this. . . ?’ Even at that, Tuesday’s rejection by voters was narrow; he lost by just 1,300 out of 88,000 votes.

Not to minimize how stupid it was for Cawthorn to make such an incendiary claim without any evidence to back it up, but it says a lot about the priorities of the GOP that this is what it took to get them to take a stand, as opposed to, you know, issues that have a real impact on people’s lives. After all, no one will die because of Cawthorn’s accusation. But apparently it threatened the brand, so something had to be done.

That this turned out to be the red line tells us everything we need to know about GOP values. The Republican Party represents the Republican Party.

By getting rid of Cawthorn, however, this party provides itself with, at best, temporary relief. He’s not the only loose cannon in their arsenal. On the contrary, the GOP has pioneered a dangerous vanity: this high office, once considered the proper domain of the serious, the learned and the prepared, has now been democratized until it can be filled by n any commonplace moron with the courage to seek it out and the ability to convince the average Joe or Jane that ignorance, immaturity, hostility to liberal values ​​and lack of impulse control constitute authenticity. No experience required. Apply indoors.

Hence, Cawthorn. Therefore, Boebert. Therefore, Greene. Therefore, Trump.

And so, existential threat. How much of this can a democracy absorb and continue to function? We are heading towards a moment of truth.

And America better have its own red line.

(Leonard Pitts Jr. is a columnist for the Miami Herald, 3511 NW 91st Ave., Miami, Fla., 33172. Readers may contact him by email at [email protected])