In many ways, it makes no sense to distinguish between Trump and the Republican Party any longer. Trump is popular among Republicans, and Republican officials are satisfied with the White House’s policy output. “I think we know enough now to know that Donald Trump is doing the same kinds of things that Jeb Bush would have done or Marco Rubio would have done or Mitt Romney would have done,” Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said on Thursday.
 

But it is too pat to pretend Republicans don’t view Trump differently than they viewed past party standard bearers, and with much, much more alarm. That they may be too cowed or craven to do anything about their concerns is beside the point: All that matters for the purposes of identifying sources of optimism is that their moral barometers aren’t broken in quite the way Trump’s is.
 

If congressional Republicans were going to use their power to check Trump, the way they would a non-partisan political or national security threat, we have a pretty decent sense of what they’d do.
 

In the policy realm, they might restrain his Muslim ban and deportation force designs; in the oversight realm, they would force him to sell off his assets, or at least release some of his tax returns, as well as launch a full inquiry into whether his campaign colluded with Russian intelligence to disrupt the presidential election. As a matter of basic governing competence, they would try to sideline reckless advisers like Steve Bannon, Stephen Miller, and the now-deposed Michael Flynn. Republicans probably can’t stop Trump from holding destabilizing press conferences, but they could make life uncomfortable for him and his team unless and until they started to show some semblance of control.

Instead they choose to whine anonymously to the press.