Trump's gone, but the GOP's conspiracy theory cesspool is here to stay

• Trump hasn't even been gone a week, but conspiracy theory culture is still clearly the base of the GOP.
• State Republican parties have been tweeting in support of QAnon, Holocaust deniers, and spreading "false flag" lies about the Capitol siege.
• Rand Paul pushed election fraud lies on national TV, and Tucker Carlson implied that QAnon criticism is a Democratic attempt at mind control.
• This isn't the "fringe." This is the new GOP normal.
• This is an opinion column. The thoughts expressed are those of the author.

Trump, the disgraced ex-president facing a second impeachment trial in the Senate, hasn't even been out of office for a week.

It's only been three weeks since the day Trump incited an attempted insurrection at the Capitol and the loudest bullhorn in the world - Trump's Twitter account - was permanently silenced.

But we already have clear evidence that the deranged conspiracy theories that came to define Trump's presidency and the Republican base that worships him as a demigod aren't going anywhere.

Ditch the GOP elephant, it's Q MAGA Party time

The conspiracy vice-grip on the GOP isn't just coming from the top. A bunch of State Republican parties ought to just do away with the charade, ditch the elephant as its logo, and replace it with a regal Q or a stout MAGA hat.

Arizona's GOP this week censured former Sen. Jeff Flake, current Gov. Doug Ducey, and Cindy McCain for their disloyalty to Emperor Trump. Among their alleged treasons were not endorsing Trump for president and correctly certifying the results of an election Trump lost.

The Arizona GOP's Twitter account last December gave a clue of just how dangerously literal and serious hardcore Trump supporters were getting with their "civil war" talk, when it asked its followers if they willing to die for the cause of overturning Trump's electoral loss.

Not to be outdone, Oregon's GOP released a resolution calling the Capitol attack "a 'false flag' operation designed to discredit President Trump, his supporters, and all conservative Republicans; this provided the sham motivation to impeach President Trump in order to advance the Democratic goal of seizing total power."

The Hawaii GOP's official Twitter account promoted both QAnon and a video conversation with a Holocaust-denying podcaster.

Couching themselves in the sober tone of the reasonable rational centrist, the account tweeted: "It is good to periodically step outside the 'bubble' of corporate commentators for additional perspective." (The tweets promoting the video were deleted and blamed on a lone employee exercising poor judgment.)

We could go on about how Texas' Republican Party last summer adopted an actual QAnon mantra - "We are the Storm" - as its slogan. But you get the idea.

One of these things could be seen as an aberration, maybe two. But even without presidential power and without Twitter, Trumpism lives on as conspiracy theory culture.

And now this culture is the Republican mainstream.

QAnon is normie culture now

QAnon is such a fact and logic-bereft con job that Alex Jones - famous only for being a conspiracy theory-pushing con man - forcefully denounced QAnon, and mocked them as gullible saps.

And yet Fox News opinion host Tucker Carlson - not in any way an intellectual idiot, and who openly mocked Trump's legal team's hapless failure to prove election fraud - is now contorting himself to come to QAnon's defense. Carlson's tortured logic is that media criticism of this deeply disturbing and violent phenomenon is equivalent to government-enforced control of minds and consciences.

That's right.

The smart MAGA TV guy is telling a mass-delusion movement - which believes in the government is run by a cabal of murderous, mind-controlling Democrats - that the Democrats are trying to control their minds.

Freshman Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene's internet footprint is dotted with QAnon and other asinine but dangerous conspiracy theories. And a recent report details her history of "liking" posts which alluded to killing elected Democrats.

To get even more mainstream, Trump's loyal golfing sidekick, Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky went on ABC's "The Week" on Sunday and continued to peddle the lie of massive fraud in the 2020 election - a lie that was born of Trump and stoked online by QAnon supporters.

Paul, a doctor, is also not an unintelligent person. He's fully aware that every Trump challenge to the election was laughed out of court. As host George Stephanopoulos told Sen. Paul: "There are not two sides to this story."

More polished Trumpists like Jeanine Pirro might be embarrassed by the cartoonish "freaks" who violently stormed the Capitol, but the ideas that brought those people beyond the edge of madness are not fringe, at least not anymore in the Republican Party.

Republicans uncomfortable with being in league with toxic lies need to forcefully, and repeatedly, denounce it. They need to confront their colleagues who continue to play footsie with maniacal fabulists. Or they should just abandon the GOP to MAGA and start a reality-based right-leaning party.

Until then, it's still Trump's party, built on a paranoid conspiracy theory culture.

• Read more:
• I was in DC for the inauguration. The overwhelming security state felt disturbingly similar to the worst parts of the post-9/11 response.
• Rep. Rashida Tlaib on why she's rallying progressives to fight back against calls for sweeping new government surveillance powers after the Capitol attack
• The right-wing conspiracy theories that fueled the Capitol siege are going to instigate more violence
• The Capitol siege proves it's finally time to take Trump and other politicians' violent rhetoric both seriously and literally.