As Senate Minority Leader, Mitch McConnell should be the Republican strongman right now, but since their transformation into a Trump cult, formal office in the Grand Old Party hasn't counted for much.
The former President's grip on the party was demonstrated by her recent rebuke of two prominent members of Congress for contradicting Trump's fairy tale of the stolen election.
In the resolution against the two, the party described the demonstrations on January 6 last year, which, as is well known, led to the storming of the Capitol, as a "legitimate political discourse".
McConnell has now firmly protested against this, but he is likely to remain a lone voice in the desert.
The polls aren't discouraging for Trump, who has yet to announce a 2024 re-election, and his political protégés will try to get his issues across many constituencies in November's congressional elections.
If they can win back the Senate or even the House of Representatives, old-school conservatives like McConnell will continue to lose influence.
That would not be a good development: these people were often the last bastion of American democracy during the Trump years.