After the riot, Mitch McConnell had a choice: completely distance the Republicans from Trump and the rioters, at the cost of party unity; or maintain party unity at the cost of the country. Being the patriotic sort, he naturally chose the former. He swiftly managed to round up enough votes to convict Trump at the second impeachment trial. Trump was therefore finished as a political force, and the GOP became, once again, a “normal” reactionary party that respected liberal democracy.
The extreme right howled, of course, but where else were the counterrevolutionaries to go? The GOP didn’t actually lose any votes on the right, since the party’s leaders continued to own the libs, but it became respectable again with centrists. As a result, somewhat to McConnell’s surprise, the divisions within the party were papered over fairly quickly, and the GOP rebounded strongly in 2022, with strong new presidential candidates looking to make a splash without meaningful interference from Trump in 2024.
The point of this, of course, is to show that the current threats to the system were not inevitable. They were the product of deliberate–and bad–choices putting the interests of the GOP ahead of the country. But why would we be surprised? Mitch openly said that his job was to retake power, not to help Americans defeat the Great Recession, in 2009.