Republican voters are slightly more likely than not to disagree with the Republican National Committee’s new position that the participants in the Capitol attack on Jan. 6, 2021, were engaged in “legitimate political discourse,” according to a new Morning Consult/Politico survey. And even more say the party should move on from former President Donald Trump’s false claims of fraud in the 2020 presidential election.

What the data says

• One-third of Republican voters said the events of Jan. 6 were a legitimate form of political discourse, compared with 38 percent who disagreed and 29 percent who did not know or had no opinion.
• Republican men were more likely than Republican women to say Jan. 6 was legitimate discourse (38 percent to 28 percent), with women 16 percentage points less likely than men to express an opinion about the Capitol aggressors.
• Among the overall electorate, 54 percent said Jan. 6 was an illegitimate form of political speech, with just 13 percent of Democrats and 18 percent of independents saying the opposite.

The context

The RNC’s decision to refer to participants in the Capitol attack as “ordinary citizens engaged in legitimate political discourse” came earlier this month at its winter meeting in Salt Lake City, where committee members also moved to censure Reps. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) and Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.) for sitting on the special House committee investigating it.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) last week became the...

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