Hi. Welcome to On Politics, your guide to the day in national politics. I’m Lisa Lerer, your host.

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Two Republican senators from North Carolina told us an awful lot this week about the state of the G.O.P. in the Trump era.

It all started, as so many political stories do these days, with a subpoena — specifically, a decision by the Senate Intelligence Committee, and its Republican chairman, Senator Richard Burr, to subpoena Donald Trump Jr., the president’s eldest son, to testify before the panel.

You may remember that it was the younger Mr. Trump who met with Russians in June 2016 after being promised political dirt about Hillary Clinton. What, if anything, Mr. Trump told his father about that meeting became the main focus of investigators’ questions when Mr. Trump testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee in 2017.

Now, as the Senate Intelligence Committee wraps up their work on Russian election interference, Mr. Burr and his colleagues decided to call on Mr. Trump for additional questioning, issuing the subpoena after discussions about him appearing voluntarily broke down.

Predictably, that did not sit well with the White House. Mick Mulvaney, the acting chief of staff, complained that he wasn’t given a warning that the Republican-led committee planned to subpoena his boss’s son. Trump allies took an anonymous shot at Mr. Burr, calling him “cowardly.”

But the most notable pushback came from Senator Thom Tillis, Mr. Burr’s fellow North Carolina Republican.

The glaring split between the two gentlemen from North Carolina underscores a rather significant political dynamic for Republicans, one you might want to keep in mind as you think about the possibility of impeachment or a primary challenge to President Trump.

Yes, there are disagreements with the president within his own party. But, for the past two years, Mr. Trump holds too much political power over the Republican base for that dissent to ever gain serious political traction.

Again and again we’ve seen that the Republicans who emerge as Mr. Trump’s loudest critics are often at the end of their political careers: Neither Jeff Flake nor Bob Corker opted to run for re-election to the Senate in 2018; Senator John McCain was nearly 80 years old when Mr. Trump was elected.

In this case, Mr. Burr is the chairman of a committee that prides itself on its bipartisanship. He’s overseeing an investigation that aides say has collected a “mountain” of evidence showing how Russia tried to influence the 2016 election.

But, perhaps most significantly, he announced last year that this would be his final term in office.

Mr. Tillis, meanwhile, is up for re-election in 2020 and, even more important, facing a primary challenge from the right. His remarks followed a warning by Charlie Kirk, a longtime supporter of the president and friend of his son.

Mr. Tillis later explained his thinking to reporters on Capitol Hill. “I personally believe Democrats are just trying to keep this thing alive, and it’s their latest launch point to do it,” he said.

But when a reporter pointed out that Mr. Burr led the committee that issued the subpoena, Mr. Tillis responded: “I think you’d have to speak to Senator Burr. I stand by my comment.”

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The Soapbox

This is The Soapbox, a forum for you to share your thoughts with us and your fellow On Politics readers. In this edition, readers sound off on their theories of electability in the 2020 race.

Michael Kubara wrote in to support a theory from the Democratic strategist David Axelrod:

David Axelrod’s theory was voters are pendulum swingers. It seems plausible. The pendulum swings from party to party, but also personality type to opposite personality type.

In one way or another, the Democratic candidates are all Trump opposites. But the issue is who can best stand the withering Trump attack. You can’t play nice with bullies.

Only Sanders. The rest lack chutzpah, if even some good ideas.

Calvin Rittenhouse of Ohio explained his protest theory:

Like everyone, the theory I support the most elects my candidates. In my case, that means Sanders or Warren.

My particular take on it is that Obama, like Reagan before him, brought out people who don’t usually vote because “they’re all crooked” and they don’t think it will help them or the country to bother voting. Most of us won’t vote for someone we believe stands for big donors ahead of us. Many stay home; I vote for other “protest” candidates.

And Mike Shepley of California shared his own theory:

I would shift the analysis a bit to an axis in the statistical hyperspace positing a Governor v. Senator shift.

It is clear since 1976 we have been in a Governor-dominated cycle. Carter, Reagan, Clinton, Bush Jr. Before that was a Senator-dominated cycle — Truman, J.F.K., L.B.J., Nixon. I would argue that the preference falls on the question, are most voters in an inward looking or internationally concerned mode? Obama suggested a shift to world concern, for many reasons. After Trump I suspect there will obviously be much international damage to clean up.

Ergo — 2020, the year of a Dem Senator.

Responses have been edited for length and clarity.

Want to share your own thoughts on which candidates have the best shot at getting elected? Send us an email: [email protected].

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What to read tonight

• After just a few years, sales of wine in cans are soaring — and now, our wine critic says, some of it is even pretty good.

• Australia put 46 million new dollar bills into circulation in October. It wasn’t until months later that someone noticed the currency contained an unfortunate spelling error.

• “I’m currently taking time off for myself.” Meet the semiretired millennials who got in early at big start-ups, and then left California for low-tax, low-stress places.

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… Seriously

Police in Los Angeles seized more than 1,000 guns from a Bel Air mansion on Wednesday.

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