You're making the argument that a conservative court is going to hold back conservatives. I'm going to disagree.
And yes, that was also an example of a thing you're railing against that worked out. This is my whole point! It's why Pigeon brought up Watergate before! You can't argue "we should be playing by the rules of decorum" if there are already examples of extrajudicial actions saving our bacon. Your criticism of the succession talk is no different than the GOP criticizing the IC right now. It's bunk.
Most of the GOP doesn't care. Someone posted pages ago that it'd take a 10 point generic ballot to rid us of Ryan, and that's still in 2 years! If not for GOP infighting, we'd have already lost the ACA and millions would be losing their coverage. Government institutions aren't keeping those people healthy, incompetence is.
I repeat in stronger terms, the GOP will do nothing about Trump at all. They will investigate themselves and find no wrongdoing. All this post says to me is that you genuinely bought it when McCain and Graham said they'd vote no on some Cabinet picks. Hook, line, and sinker.
1) The court will be as conservative as it was before, when it kept ACA, passed gay marriage, and has rebuffed challenges to Roe v Wade. They're replacing Scalia - you're back to the same court we've had through the end of the Obama administration. Legally speaking, the immigration EO was dead in the water the second Giuliani talked about it being a muslim ban.
2) There is a large difference between whistleblowers and ignoring explicit instructions in the constitution. If you legitimately think that Deep Throat leaking reports to journalists (who had to go and verify them in other places) is the same as saying "well, we don't like the succession rules in the Constitution (because they don't give us the president we want), so we're just going to ignore them". No one would be saying a word about "special elections" if the Speaker of the House was a Democrat.
Honestly, this entire thing smacks of "we want to install our leader, damn the Constitution", and the Russians are our excuse. If Ryan had any link to the Russians, or there was any evidence that the Republican Party as a whole was working with the Russians and they had actually meddled in our election beyond making facebook bait pages - that would be one thing. But there's been zero evidence or inkling of that. Wanting special elections because the Speaker of the House is also a Republican is just dangerously authoritarian, and I've seen enough bitterness and "ends justify the means" reasoning this election to believe that there is a subset of progressives who are mad not because Trump's an authoritarian, but because Trump's not a progressive authoritarian.
3) People fighting back and going to their representatives' town halls are what's causing this. Mass protests with millions of people in the streets are what's causing this. GOP incompetence is helping, sure, but without the GOP reps and senators who are sitting in primarily purple-y areas feeling massive heat, you don't have the in-fighting occur to begin with. Y'all don't think it was kinda coincidental that right as the protests started occurring it all ground to a screeching halt?
4) Heh, I've been the one telling folks that I didn't want Trump to win the primary because the GOP falls in line. I know they weren't gonna stop the cabinet nominees. But the GOP will fall in line as long as it gets them elected - the GOP's best move has been to align falling in line with getting re-elected. But when falling in line starts to diverge with being re-elected (say, with a very unpopular president) - you'll start seeing some parts of the GOP defect to try to save their behinds.
EDIT: And I'll just leave it at that. I get that Trump is Nixon-esque in terms of threat to the presidency, but I am far more unwilling to just throw everything out the window at the drop of a hat, especially when, frankly, we've dealt with Nixon without having to nuke the Constitution from orbit. I get there are people who are far more about ends justify the means and far more willing to go to extra-Constitutional means to get that W - but even as someone who is relatively impacted (brown man with a beard whose family lives in rural IL) by the insanity going on, I'm genuinely terrified that American society's focus on winning at all costs is going to cost us our republic / democracy, and maybe it's not as apparent right now, but this country's freaking special and I don't want it to turn into Europe 2.0.