It seems like years ago that a new Congresswoman (was it coincidental she was a person of color) was savaged for saying that Individual-1 should be impeached. Given the disclosures of the past few days, and the near certainty that even more will come out in the near future, it has now become respectable for even members of the media to discuss the possibility. It is now clear that he has committed impeachable offenses.
Over at Hullabaloo, tristero makes a good case for the proposition that politically, it would be better for the Democrats not to impeach, though he (or she) still thinks impeachment is the morally right course. The thrust of the argument is that so long as the Republicans continue to enable Trump, they will continue to lose political support and the “entire country can see that the party as a whole is intellectually and morally bankrupt.”
There is another side to this as well. Let’s play pretend, and assume for the moment that the tide of public opinion pushes Republican senators to a guilty verdict. This is unlikely in the extreme, but bear with me.
In that case, McConnell would put himself out front, because a consensus would have been reached among them that conviction would be smart politics.
Even though anyone with a lick of sense would realize that the verdict was the result of political necessity and not principle, that’s not the way it would be played by our unbiased media.
Should there be a guilty verdict, the media would instantly announce that the Republican Party had put country before party. All of its sins, which led directly to a Trump presidency and enabled his criminality once he got in, would immediately be consigned to the memory hole. McConnell and his ilk would be favorably compared to the Democratic Senators who refused to convict Clinton, because, after all, we live in a both sides world, and surely being a Russian agent and getting a blow job are comparable sins. The loathsome Pence, enabler extraordinaire, would immediately become a healer. The Dems would probably still win in 2020, but these memes would nonetheless rehabilitate the party of racists, Nazis, and plutocrats in short order.
I think it’s fair to say that’s how it would play out, should the Republicans defy their base and vote to convict. I doubt it will happen, unless Fox starts laying the groundwork very soon. If you start hearing the folks on Fox saying Trump is really a liberal, then maybe it’s in the cards.
I also very much doubt that tristero’s hoped for “demise of the modern Republican Party” will happen, no matter what the genius’s fate may be. The fact is that the media has come to believe that the Republican Party is the norm, with a sort of vested right to political power. How else explain the preponderance of Republicans and conservatives on the Sunday shows. How, to go a step further, can one explain the ubiquity of Lindsey Graham, a man undistinguished for any actual accomplishments? Whatever the future may hold, Trump’s sins will be Trump’s sins and his alone; his Republican enablers will not suffer at the hands of the media, which will do its best to see that the public forgets the role of the Republican Party in creating the conditions for a Trump presidency and enabling his criminality once he was in office.
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