Republicans went ahead and stripped Liz Cheney of her leadership post. But Cheney’s principled stance is part of a much larger rebellion. Tomorrow, more than 100 senior Republican former officials will release plans for a possible breakaway party.

That could usher in the first new major party since 1856, when the Republicans supplanted the Whigs. The analogy is apt. The Whigs collapsed because they could not decide how to deal with slavery. The Republicans could perish because they can’t decide what to do with Trump.

Let’s put all this in broader context. History is filled with turning points that could have gone either way. FDR was nearly assassinated in 1933. Suppose FDR had been killed before the New Deal even began. Or supposed JFK had lived.

What if Hitler had followed the advice of his generals and invaded Britain in 1941 instead of Russia. And suppose the brinkmanship of the 1962 missile crisis had gone wrong, producing a nuclear exchange.

For that matter, suppose Republicans had narrowly prevailed in 2020, and Trump was still in the White House.

Now America is at one of those crucial inflection points. Joe Biden is inspiring new hope as he channels his inner FDR.

But if Republicans prevail in destroying democracy and take control of either house in 2022, Biden’s New Deal II will end before it barely begins. In state after state, most notably Texas, Florida, and Georgia, Republicans are rushing through new measures intended to suppress votes and rig vote counts.

But today for the first time in weeks, I’m feeling hopeful, on several grounds.

First, the long-predicted crack-up of the Republican Party could be at hand. Republicans are fatally divided into fantasy true believers, shameless opportunists who know better but fear the retribution of the Trump base, and principled conservatives.

It is hard to imagine putting Humpty-Dumpty back together. And if the new party runs candidates for the House and Senate, that could flip dozens of seats to the Democrats in 2022, offsetting Republican vote-rigging attempts.

Second, Trump is likely to be indicted and quite possibly convicted. That could narrow the hard core that continues to support him.

Third, the Roberts Court rejected all efforts last November and December to overturn election results. The Court may yet overturn some of the cruder Republican state efforts to rig the vote count.

Finally, 2022 will bring the greatest grassroots mobilization America has ever seen to save democracy at the polls. History, as the saying goes, is often a close-run thing. Never more than at this moment.