Jennifer Rubin is appropriately appalled that Republicans are more displeased with Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming than Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia. Yet, I think she’s still in denial about what this means.

Rubin argues persuasively that the Republican base is now basically a collection of  “crackpots, anti-Semites, white nationalists and anti-democratic seditionists” who should be treated like other “violent extremists.” In fact, she emphasizes that this is a transnational movement and suggests we look abroad for models of how to manage the threat they present to our safety.

But how are we supposed to that when this movement is now synonymous with the Republican Party?

There are limits to how far we can go in combating extremism when the target is one of the two major American political parties. The House Republicans have already failed their first two tests. Only ten of their members voted to impeach Donald Trump for instigating a deadly attack on their place of work. And they couldn’t even remove Rep. Greene from a single committee assignment. They gave her a standing ovation instead.

Now, in fairness, Rubin recognizes that the government can’t tackle this problem alone and will need assistance from leaders in the private sector, but it’s very hard to see how any of the following would work in the face of Republican opposition.

“Conventional thinking about far-right extremism often frames it as a domestic problem within nation-states. But such groups and movements are transnational, sharing ideas and tactics across borders,” write Cynthia Miller-Idriss and Daniel Koehler for Foreign Affairs. “The U.S. government should therefore consider how governments abroad are tackling this growing global menace.” Looking at Germany and Norway, Miller-Idriss and Koehler recommend a broad-based anti-extremist campaign “drawing not only on the knowledge of counterterrorism experts but also on the insights of community groups, victims of extremist violence, educators, researchers, and mental health workers.”

This would include “a hard look into the ranks of the security services,” to which a disproportionate number of the Jan. 6 attackers belong. Instead of treating these people as a political force to be mollified, we need to address this as a social, mental health and cultural issue. As Miller-Idriss and Koehler write, we must make “extensive investments in local and national data collection and intelligence monitoring, coupled with educational and youth-oriented programming, training for teachers and social workers, cooperation with civil society and religious groups, support for victims and survivors, and a wide variety of programming to combat online radicalization.”

It’s one thing to monitor militias and other extremist groups, but quite another to monitor gatherings of Republicans. Imagine a broad education campaign aimed at teaching children about the extremism of the Republican Party or an effort to weed Republicans out of the Army and the CIA.

Unfortunately, what Rubin fails to recognize is that the problem has grown too large to handle. Even if we tried these things and somehow found a way to conduct them in a constitutional manner, they’d have to change the nature of the Republican Party in a big hurry before they have a chance to win back the presidency or either chamber of Congress. And what’s the likelihood that we’d get any cooperation from Republican governors, attorneys general or legislatures?

I don’t like being pessimistic, but it’s too late to fix this with a whole-of-government approach. Congress is completely corrupted by Trumpism and cannot be part of the solution.

However, Biden’s Justice Department can throw the book at the Trumps, Trump’s cronies, and every example of grifting and corruption they can find from his administration. They can make clear that criminal behavior will be punished and reestablish norms through threat of prosecution. They can build a narrative about the past this way that will be more authoritative and less controversial than a bunch of public service announcements and  “programming to combat online radicalization.”

Simply put, when the radicalization we’re warning about is Republicanism, it’s not going to work.

Where the Democrats might make some headway legislatively is by passing really robust federal voting rights standards so the Republicans can’t win elections based on voter suppression and other shenanigans. This will hasten a change in the right’s strategy. To do this, the Democrats have to eliminate the legislative filibuster, so maybe Rubin should focus on that.