I don’t often say nice things about Republicans, so brace yourself.

I’m reading The January 6th Report: Findings from the Select Committee to Investigate the Attack on the U.S. Capitol.

The report shows that, at crucial moments, Republicans in key positions stood up against the Trump-MAGA attack on democracy. Then Republicans testified about what happened, helped investigate it all and held the guilty to account.

First among them are former Reps. Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger, who sacrificed their political careers to serve on the select committee.

In her introduction to the report, Cheney wrote, “In presenting all the information in our hearings, we decided that the vast majority of our witnesses needed to be Republicans. They were. We presented evidence from two former Trump Administration Attorneys General, a former White House Counsel, many Trump-appointed White House, Justice Department and Trump Campaign staff, a respected former conservative judge, the former Secretary of Labor, and many others.”

Some of them did more than testify. Before, on and after January 6, they defied Trump and defended democracy.

So did Republican judges, some of them Trump-appointed, and Republican state election officials, who threw out Trumped-up claims of fraud and refused to lie about the election.

Still, if Trump and his crowd hadn’t been so spectacularly and almost comically incompetent, he might have pulled it off.

His “elite legal strike team” – led by inebriated, hair-dye-dripping Rudy Giuliani and crackpot conspiracy-monger Sidney Powell – went 0-for-60 in court.

But it was a close call.

We were lucky that some Republicans put country and Constitution before Trump and party.

America would be better served if more did.