Republicans need to arrive at a serious plan to defund, expose, and delegitimize the FBI and the national security apparatus generally, and to commit to this plan.
Any senior-level FBI employees found to have abused their positions in the course of such investigations would be criminally indicted, and any rank-and-file members found to have inappropriately colluded in such misbehavior would be fired, stripped of pension, and disgraced.
If the GOP really wanted to get creative, it could allocate 50 or 60 million dollars to create a fund that would protect and support whistleblowers within the FBI, CIA, NSA, and the upper echelons of the Justice Department. This would offer an opportunity for national security bureaucrats to safely and comfortably come forward and begin a much-needed reconciliation process with the American people.
Conservatives must treat the FBI and the rest of the national security apparatus as the hostile and partially illegitimate institutions that they are, and not run back into the arms of their national security tormenter whenever the uniparty regime saber-rattles about the threat from some hostile entity overseas.
The real threat to the American way of life is not Russia, or even China—it is the corrupt and illegitimate ruling class that runs America. The national security apparatus, together with the corporate media, has become the ruling class' most potent weapon.
It's time the ruling class be held accountable for its corruption, and it's time that all Americans understand our politics will be nothing but fake and performative until the national security apparatus is brought to heel.