Since there is no fixed and defined definition of what constitutes an impeachable offense, it pretty much comes down to whatever Congress thinks is unforgivable or at least politically unsustainable. What Nixon did met that definition. What Bill Clinton did ultimately did not. I think it’s obvious that there must be some kind of criminal or at least highly unethical component, but the truth is that the decision will always come in a specific context in which the totality of the conditions in the environment are what is determinative.
President Trump is presently working on almost all fronts to justify his removal. For Republican senators, nothing is more damning that his foreign policy decision making. It’s highly doubtful that this will factor into any actual articles of impeachment, but his impulsiveness and cluelessness and doubtful loyalty are going to at least privately give the senators comfort that they’re justified in pulling the plug.
The Associated Press has the story:
President Donald Trump’s decision to withdraw American troops from Syria was made hastily, without consulting his national security team or allies, and over strong objections from virtually everyone involved in the fight against the Islamic State group, according to U.S. and Turkish officials.
Trump stunned his Cabinet, lawmakers and much of the world with the move by rejecting the advice of his top aides and agreeing to a withdrawal in a phone call with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan last week, two U.S. officials and a Turkish official briefed on the matter told The Associated Press.
Look at the details:
The Dec. 14 call came a day after Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and his Turkish counterpart Mevlut Cavusoglu agreed to have the two presidents discuss Erdogan’s threats to launch a military operation against U.S.-backed Kurdish rebels in northeast Syria, where American forces are based. The NSC then set up the call.
Pompeo, Mattis and other members of the national security team prepared a list of talking points for Trump to tell Erdogan to back off, the officials said.
But the officials said Trump, who had previously accepted such advice and convinced the Turkish leader not to attack the Kurds and put U.S. troops at risk, ignored the script. Instead, the president sided with Erdogan.
In the following days, Trump remained unmoved by those scrambling to convince him to reverse or at least delay the decision to give the military and Kurdish forces time to prepare for an orderly withdrawal.
“The talking points were very firm,” said one of the officials, explaining that Trump was advised to clearly oppose a Turkish incursion into northern Syria and suggest the U.S. and Turkey work together to address security concerns. “Everybody said push back and try to offer (Turkey) something that’s a small win, possibly holding territory on the border, something like that.”
Erdogan, though, quickly put Trump on the defensive, reminding him that he had repeatedly said the only reason for U.S. troops to be in Syria was to defeat the Islamic State and that the group had been 99 percent defeated. “Why are you still there?” the second official said Erdogan asked Trump, telling him that the Turks could deal with the remaining IS militants.
With Erdogan on the line, Trump asked national security adviser John Bolton, who was listening in, why American troops remained in Syria if what the Turkish president was saying was true, according to the officials. Erdogan’s point, Bolton was forced to admit, had been backed up by Mattis, Pompeo, U.S. special envoy for Syria Jim Jeffrey and special envoy for the anti-ISIS coalition Brett McGurk, who have said that IS retains only 1 percent of its territory, the officials said.
Bolton stressed, however, that the entire national security team agreed that victory over IS had to be enduring, which means more than taking away its territory.
Trump was not dissuaded, according to the officials, who said the president quickly capitulated by pledging to withdraw, shocking both Bolton and Erdogan.
Caught off guard, Erdogan cautioned Trump against a hasty withdrawal, according to one official.
To begin with, the call was only necessary because Erdogan was threatening to attack our Kurdish allies in Syria and we needed to give him some kind of bone to head him off. And that’s all Erdogan really expected or wanted. He was so shocked to have the president take his side that he immediately began backing off, asking that Trump not take any precipitous actions.
That Trump makes decisions like this is bad enough. That he breezily agrees to the slaughter of our Kurdish allies is despicable beyond description. That he could not be talked out of his decision should be fatal.
It caused the immediate resignation of Defense Secretary James Mattis and a worldwide outcry of alarm from friends and foes alike. I think, more than any other decision Trump has made as president, this has done the most damage to his relationship with the Washington establishment, very much including the Republican members of the Senate.
He can no longer be contained or constrained, and it’s simply time for him to go. All we need now are the components that will make up the official rationale.
Trump will be turfed out when his deplorables desert him in sufficient numbers to reassure wavering senators that it’s safe to convict after impeachment. Not a moment before, no matter how they howl for the cameras. The welfare and safety of the country, let alone the world, mean nothing.
If Fox says “Get him out!” he’ll be gone; if not, not.
No, Booman’s right. I think this latest move of Trump has crossed into the red zone and takes things beyond domestic political considerations. Remember, even ERDOGAN, who inadvertently precipitated it, was shocked.
This is no longer fun and games. Trump is toast — and those republicans who think it’s still all about playing to the base are going to get some serious wake-up calls in the very near future. There are other major sources of power in this country, and they’ve had enough. And frankly, so have I, and so has the majority of this country.
So we have the 25th amendment solution. And we have the impeachment solution. And we have the open question as to whether a sitting President can be indicted which, no doubt, would probably be adjudicated over a long period of time; possibly beyone the term of this President, if he and his allies fought it all the way to the end. Does a GOP contingent march to the Oval Office and demand he resign for the good of the country? I think we all know how that would go.
Which of these remedies are plausible? And what else can happen that doesn’t involve what amounts to a coup d’etat? Major sources of power can be as pissed off as they want, but how many avenues are really available to them?
We need what, 14 Republican Senators to vote to impeach?
I agree that this crossed into the red zone. But what mechanisms are available to the other power centers to stop this?
We need twenty GOPs to convict. I don’t see it.
It’s only twenty if you know how to math. Sheesh. I’m so shitty at counting I could challenge Pelosi.
You will.
I hope you’re right.
AG
I hate him. I hate him. I want him to live a long, long, long time, either with boxed-in syndrome, or in ADX Florence solitary (b/c his security). God I hate him.
For a long time, I held faith in “the owners” — the rich and powerful who actually own the country, and who have long time horizons. I held faith that they’d eventually realize that this imbecile was imperiling their possessions. I mean, he was giving it away to some Russian usurper, how could they stand for that. And yet they did. And after enough times around that game board, hoping that the owners would do something, I gave up hope in them.
I don’t believe there is some other power in our country, to take it back from him. Other than the people. And as long as Shitler has his base, that’ll have to wait for an election. Or (god forbid) an insurrection. [again, god forbid]
Yes, it could be……….but it won’t be.
I still see the only thing which will do that will be an election. Tell me, how does any Republican politician walk this plank? I just don’t see it happening. If someone is the first, the example that is made of them by Trump and his base will be all it takes to keep all of the other ones in line. And there is not sufficient kabuki that they can do to produce enough smoke and mirrors to assuage Trump or his base, by faking things. Trump, of course, can be easily fooled. But as we’ve seen this week, all it takes is a high profile right wing figure to point out that he’s either being played or is appearing feckless, and everyone gets back in line. If all that the GOP had to do was deal with Trump, it would be one thing. But they have Fox News and all the other RW media playing the role of Himmler in making sure that everyone is on board with carrying out the far right agenda. All they want is people who are able to punch the proper buttons in the halls of Congress when the appropriate votes come up. That’s it. There is no debate. There are no competing points of view to be hammered out in closed door meetings. They are to show up and do the bidding of Trump and his acolytes. And by god, if they don’t want to stay up to speed with the program, then dammit, they will find someone else who will! What the hell are all these Senators going to do, other than eventually fall in line? Are they all going to retire and spend more time with their families to keep from having to make this hard choice?
Like everyone else, I have no real idea about what the end game will look like here. But for the life of me, I simply just do not see anyone in the Republican Party willing to be the first patriot who steps out and says, “ENOUGH”!!! They are doing nothing more than rubbing a metaphorical rabbit’s foot with all this tut-tutting and side-eyes at the daily conflagration. The country is in fucking flames, and they are all standing around, looking at each other, waiting for someone else to run and get the fire extinguisher.
I was just thinking the other thing that might get the GOP to vote to remove him. The stock market. If the Dow drops to like 12 or 15,000 by the middle of January that could do it. But people aren’t thinking this whole thing through. Will Pence get the heave ho with Trump? Because there is no way on God’s green earth that the GOP would vote to make Pelosi president. If, somehow, the GOO votes to remove only Trump, then what? The VP spot is vacant. Which means that the GOP gets to choose the VP to replace Pence. All it takes is a majority vote. So the GOP won’t give the Democrats any choice there. I wonder what the betting odds are on their choice if they have to make it.
You can’t fire the VP and so far there is no case against him.
“President Trump is presently working on almost all fronts to justify his removal.”
As true a statement as has ever been written. It’s incredible.
He’s raised incompetency to such a high art form he should be hanging in the Louvre.
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link
I don’t see it yet, in the same camp as other posters. The base and Fox are in charge – the donor class – meh. Feckless. They ran to support the crazy man in 2016. I think they are followers, not leaders.
For this crowd, only direct experience of pain has any chance of breaking thru the thick cloud of fanatical beliefs in nonsense surrounding the rocky crust of cognitive dissonance. Not only does experience not work on many of them – one can hope for just enough- but it probably means we’re all going to rack up a lot of pain while we wait.
Its not just what he did, its how it came about that brings pause. And it raises the possibility of Trump “negotiating” like this again, with even more immediate, dire consequences. I believe for once senate republicans are starting to see the risk they take, for continuing to prop up a dangerously incompetent president. This decision to quickly pull out, by its very nature, exposes US personnel over there in the interim.
For Erdogan to warn Trump means the ramifications of Trump’s capitulation are so serious and potentially dire even he felt pity and did not want to take full advantage of President Deals. If US personnel are severely injured or killed as a result, it won’t just be on Trump, but on republicans, who could have reigned him in or removed him beforehand.
Will senate republicans continue fueling the Trump crazy train as it careens towards one disaster after another, and risk going over the cliff with it? A risk that becomes greater and more severe every day Trump remains in office. Or will they accept Trump has worn out his welcome with his antics and incompetence, and trigger the beginning of the end?
If I were going to look for Republican Senators who would be willing to vote to convict in an impeachment proceeding, I’d look first among the ones that voted in favor of the initiative(s) to protect Robert Mueller and Rod Rosenstein as they worked to develop the official rationale for impeachment.
Except, those initiatives all died before a vote could be taken, thus providing cover for all of the Republican Senators who know quite well all about Trump’s impulsiveness, cluelessness, and so on. And the only Republican Senator to raise any fuss about this was Jeff Flake, who’s retiring to spend more time with his money.
A back-of-envelope calculation looks like: 67 (votes necessary to convict) – 47 (Democratic Senators, if they all vote to convict) = 20 Republican votes required. And 0 Republican votes in hand for conviction. Show me the self interest — not the party, not the voters, not the country (ha! I almost choked when I typed that) and certainly not the Republican foreign policy consensus that moves those 20 votes, and you have a stronger case. If you can’t show personal self interest I don’t think you have a persuasive case because they show no signs of caring about anything else.
And, frankly, I think that, once again, Russia probably factored into Trump’s decision. Putin has a long-tterm interest in maintaing his only warm water port in a critical region. This is the port of Tartus. Propping up the Assad regime also gives Russia an important client state.
Of course, Trump doesn’t understand any of this. He probably did factor a desire to please Putin into his impulsive decision but what was more important to him was just ending these endless wars (he did campaign on that). In fact, our 2000 person force in Syria is not intended to be a conventional fighting force anyway but to provide advice and tactical advantage, especially to the Kurds.
However, it is Trump’s impulsive, completely non-strategic decision-making process and one in which only he, the Emperor, makes a decision, usually based on no information whatsoever or whatever Fox tells him to do, which amounts to the same thing.
I’ll make no case for Trump’s decision-making process, but we would do well to recognized that a lot of the feet in those boots-on-the-ground belong to the sons and daughters of working-class families, who rolled the dice on a career in the military because they could see no other way of bootstrapping themselves out of precarity.
Those would be the children of Trump’s base. Do you think that they, or their parents, are feeling a lot of remorse about getting them out of our never-ending war in one piece, no matter the means or the consequences?
In that sense, if in no other, Trump’s decision-making process is highly strategic. He’s stupid in many ways, but not always in the ways we make him out to be.
Huh. I don’t know. This is not Vietnam. Those special forces guys are volunteers, as are the various Navy and Air Force teams.
I don’t remember many people saying anything about their sons and daughters in military service in Syria. In fact, for a long time, their presence there was unreported and “secret” (sort of an open one, but still). No demos in the streets. The Iraq war had a lot more negative feedback, and those in service there were also volunteers (or in some cases, contractors).
ISIS vanished from American news when E Mosul fell in Iraq. We’re not exactly tuned in to this issue now. I just don’t see your argument carrying much weight.
It’s the air superiority that matters.
The special forces are great but ….
So Trump is to stupid to understand that the ISIS story was always cover, but smart enough to realise that he has been played and reacts by going straight to Twitter?
Quite right Erdogan got shocked, he knows how the game is supposed to be played. He also knows that the US supported the Syrian opposition before 2010, he has the inside details of just when and how jihadists from across the world arrived in Syria and who sent money and arms to whom. And he knows this because Turkey, US, Saudi Arabia and Qatar were the supporters of the different factions and at least in the beginning, they collaborated (and whatever the goal was, it wasn’t protecting Kurds). So he expects the talking points and has his talking points prepared. And then Trump goes of script and starts acting on Erdogan’s talking points? That has got to be a shocker.
Yes, not being able to play salesman of the empire may very well be the unforgivable sin. Does he think that he can just pull out troops that are illegally stationed in foreign countries? Who does he think he is?
. . . recurring argument here.
First the Reality: Trump has been an outrageous, constantly lying, criminal bigot and fool from before the outset of this maladministration. Good cause to remove him has existed throughout, just as did good cause to never let him get where he is in the first place. But neither his outrages nor the harm inflicted by them are going along in some steady state or equilibrium. They are constantly escalating, arguably exponentially (picture a graph of global average temperature!).
In this context, the recurring argument here goes roughly, and very predictably, like this:
Booman chronicles the latest escalation in the crisis, interpreting it as the latest step in the end game that will result in Trump’s removal, under the implied assumption that there is in fact some bottom below which even Banana Republicans and their backers can no longer look the other way or continue pretending Trump’s outrages and inflicted harm are tolerable, at which point not removing him will become the untenable position.
The pushback (including, at times, from me) predictably goes roughly like this: Trump has been outrageously criminal and deplorable and immoral and harmful all along, and the Banana Republicans haven’t lifted a finger to stop him — indeed have aided and abetted his outrages in numerous ways — so there’s no rational basis to predict that will ever change (and the pushback — see numerous examples throughout this thread — typically proceeds to predict rather strongly that that will never happen; because if it could happen, it would have already).
But there’s a major fallacy underlying this pushback: the fallacy that outcomes in the future must echo those in the past. This would not be unreasonable (i.e., not a fallacy) if conditions in the future echoed those in the past, i.e., if the outrages and harm being inflicted by Trump were just bumping along at about the same level, i.e., in some sort of steady state or equilibrium.
But they aren’t. They’re escalating and accelerating (plus being documented with a growing mountain of evidence) as Booman keeps chronicling. It’s a fallacy to presume that because Banana Republicans have been consistently willing to tolerate Trump’s outrages in the earlier stages of an accelerating crisis, that they must necessarily remain willing to tolerate them as the later stages of the accelerating crisis make the damage being inflicted more and more undeniable. (Another way to look at it: We tend to think that because Trump’s crimes and sins have been so intolerable to us all along, yet Banana Republicans have tolerated them anyway, that some level of outrage so great that they could/would not tolerate it cannot exist. I’ve often felt that way myself. But this is logically flawed reasoning.)
This isn’t me declaring Booman’s right, though I certainly hope so. (And as I’ve said here before: if he’s wrong, then stick a fork in us, we’re done.) The only decisive test of that is whether Congress gets to a decision point on either 25th Amendment or impeachment (or maybe coerced resignation to avoid impending impeachment conviction, à la Nixon). Until then, all our prognostication (Booman’s included) is just speculation.
Just pointing out a logical flaw in much of the pushback whenever Booman puts up a top-post like this one. (Doesn’t make predictions grounded in or including that flawed logic wrong, either — only an actual outcome can do that.)
— rightwingers all, plus lying, bigoted, dishonorable asshole in at least Kelly’s case — all tolerated the intolerable until it reached a point where . . . they didn’t.
Why would BRP* Senators be immune to this process?
*Banana Republican Party, successor to GOP
Well, we all recognize this statement, right?
Thank you! You make some very great points.
I think that there is probably not a single Republican right now who wants to be “the one”. And I can’t say that I blame them. Their whole Party, and its leader, are one big shit show, and I have no doubt there are any number of them who wish it could all just go away. But this is a game that they have worked hard for decades to create. And now the game is well in progress, and many of the rules are set. And any thought of turning back carries a whole host of dire scenarios for them personally.
So here we are, in full-on,, non-stop, careening-out-of-control, crisis mode. And they know that, at least a lot of them do. And I am sure they are scared. They should be. There is little doubt that they are politically frightened, since there is an angry mob watching them 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, and waiting for them to show any sign of wavering or weakness. That is the face that we see every day, as many of them seek to dance on the head of a pin, working ceaselessly to appear both responsible to their duties, yet loyal to the passions and hearts of their core voters.
I agree with you that the outrages and the harm are escalating and accelerating at a more feverish pace every day, practically every hour. And I agree with you that there is a fallacy which is often embraced that future events will echo those of the past. And it is an easy trap to fall into. But there is also one thing in this equation for Republican politicians which is a solid constant. And that is their base voters. Regardless of anything else that happens around the politicians, that dreaded constant holds the power of political life and death over them. And that holds a singular sway that probably trumps almost everything else. They know the ramifications of any perceived disloyalty.
The walls are closing in quickly around Republicans in Congress. And there is nothing they can do to stall this. Yes, no one knows with any level of certainty how they will react, or what they will do to address what is happening right now. I think they would love for nothing more than for things to just bumble along an uneven and rough path until the voters have the opportunity to make the hard decision for them, and dump Republicans in droves in 2020. As with all things in the future, that is by no means a certainty. But it would certainly allow them to breathe a sigh of relief if it happened, and allow them to remain in the good stead of their voters. But that is not going to happen. We are rapidly nearing the point where the final decision will need to be made as to which side of the fence they wish to land; on the side of small “d” democracy, or on the side of Trump’s authoritarian dreamscape, where he assumes a dictatorial position.
Yes, much of what we post here is speculation. Yes, we can all look into the past and see that history is rife with unknown unknowns. But Republicans know they are literally faced with political life and death with the situation they are now facing. The circumstances now are really unprecedented in modern times. Their base voters are committed to Trump and Trumpism, literally to their deaths. The hold is cult-like in a way that is just not there in any other historical context. So to expect that in the face of such circumstances there is even a 50.1% chance that they will make the proper moral and patriotic decision is simply nothing more than wishful or hopeful guesswork.
. . . It sounds to me like you’re saying, in essence, that defying Trump = crossing their own base, hence likely political suicide (that much I mostly agree with, except allowing for some individual variability!), so they will never, ever do this. Which seems a perfectly reasonable prediction if based only on past performance under past conditions.
I just don’t think (and this is my sense of Booman’s position, too) that can be taken as a given in such a continuously escalating crisis, even though the past would predict it. I’m not even going to guess probability on it. Just sayin’ it’s a logical flaw to dismiss as impossible that they’d ever come to recognize an outcome that could be worse than political suicide. (Plus, there’s the possibility they come to understand they’re politically dead either way, so may as well do the right thing for the country on their way out the door. Again, not claiming that’s probable, just that it can’t be dismissed as a possibility.)
Gotta disagree with this, though:
Cuz I think I can easily come up with a couple historical contexts (one very obvious one) in which such a cult-like hold was evident. They don’t bode well, though.
I think we largely agree. I certainly didn’t intend to imply that they would never cross Trump, but if that was a sense that I gave, I apologize. I do think there is a reasonable (???) chance that they eventually will, at least enough of them to maybe make a difference. But there is just no way at this point to put a percentage on it. Right now, it all just seems to be individual gut feel, and everyone has a slightly different take. Some of us, it appears, are more cynical than others. Time will tell whose point of view is more well founded. I hope BooMan ends up being the winner on that one.
As for my reference to historical context, I probably did jump the gun a bit there. Certainly, our history has, as you pointed out, a couple of pretty stark examples of this phenomena. Thanks for your thoughtful take on all this.
Your not alone in your gut feelings. I am pretty cynical when it comes to the republicans doing the right thing. After all, when a parties basic policy positions are to end the ACA, end Medicare, and end Social Security for one reason…to give tax cuts to the wealthy, it’s pretty hard to imagine them capable of ever doing the right thing. Then finding out this week that the GOP will be giving complete control of all money raised by the Republican election committee to Trump, it’s hard to see a path to a split.
But how can all this go on? The guy is insane. Peace in the ME now depends on a country that just cut some guy up alive, another who wants to torture to death a guy hiding in America, and another guy who murders people in England with radioactive isotope pellets!
I admit that none of that raises to the level of improper email protocol, but on the surface, it looks pretty bad.
How bad?
We are now depending on Mitch McConnell to do the right thing.
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Yes, it seems to me that the only rational position, based on the accumulation of years of evidence, is to be cynical. The fact that the situation is becoming so dire does not necessarily lend any more credence to the possibility of them doing the right thing.
Hmmmm…..how cynical can I be?
Mattis is being framed as the adult in the room. You know who else was in that room? White Supremicists. Right in the room with him for two years. He was fine with that. Locking babies in cages? Fine with that. (Still happpening, btw) Trump supporting Nazis? No problem. All the lying? Okie dokie.
All of the above is against the Military Code of Conduct. But the two `adults’, Mattis and Kelly, are fine with that.
Yep! The `adults’.
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There’s no making some people happy.
You want the US out of other countries?
You want an end to American military intervention abroad?
You want to ratchet down our role as world policemen?
You’ve got it — first withdrawal from Syria, and from Afghanistan soon to follow.
So it doesn’t look like what you wanted, and you don’t like who’s doing it.
All those people you’re angry Trump didn’t consult first? That’s the Washington blob that’s been driving the imperialist train for decades. Why is their input so valuable now?
Running down the rabbit hole with Max Boot.
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Trump’s Syria Decision Could Be Fatal
… or not. 🙂
That’s all well and good.
But intervention makes things worse, not better.
American intervention makes thing very bad indeed.
I suppose support here for NATO/US action in Libya was equally widespread, if reluctant, with lots of ‘Yes, but what’s the alternative?”
The bigger the demonstrations against Trump on this, the less likely ANY democratic President will ever be able to draw down troops anywhere in the world, for any reason.
It’s another example of Republicans being better than Democrats at the `long game’.
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Right now it feels like someone walked around the clown car and loosened all the lugs. The donald has taken the entire country hostage for a lug wrench. He is costing each one of those rich senators millions and that’s the motivation that will make them flee. The GOP does not care about ISIS, Kurds, Iran. Their bank accts have a clock ticking on the donald.
Martin is entirely correct. Who funds the GOP Senators? Who gives them plums and sweets in the form of contributions and donations to their pet charities, and ski vacations with lobbyists on fact finding junkets to Austria, or parties in Aspen? Who gives them royal access to power and prestige and plum, cushy highly lucrative lobbyist jobs after they hang up their Senatorial Robes and join the unholy ranks of the paid lobbyist battalions to work and grease the wheels of juicy federal contracts?
Who gets said federal contracts? Why the military industrial complex of course. Donald Trump is fucking very hard with billions of dollars in industry and they are immediately very, very not happy. And every one of those firms, General Dynamics, Raytheon, Boeing, on down the list has senators on their list. When they call Senator X, the Senator will take that call because it’s the lobbyist for Northrop Grumman. The same Nortrop Grumman that spent $11m on lobbying in 2018.
One of dozens of other lobbyists. This list:
What will happen when the lobbyist from one of those companies calls Rep. Senator X and tells him “we gave $40,000 to your campaign Senator, and now you’re killing us! This precipitous withdrawal is going to cost us millions of $! It takes us years to plan for what the market will be, and Trump has a brain fart and suddenly, two years of planning effort and millions of dollars of our sharholder’s money flies out the window! On what is for Trump, a whim. No thought at all behind it, totally against all the expert advice he’s getting. He’s just acting erratically and impulsively based on what imbecile is telling him on Twitter or Fox News or talk radio. We just can’t have that. IT’s BAD FOR BUSINESS!
And business has been very, very good to you Senator. We need your help on this. We need you to vote to convict and remove Trump from office.”
Now your GOP Senator doesn’t want to hear this. They don’t want to be put between the upper and nether millstones of having to choose between their major campaign contributors and future lobbyist employers and friends, and the idiot base of their party.
But, if you put them in enough of a squeeze and Trump’s behavior keeps getting more and more erratic, which of course it will, he’s going to make enough very rich people unhappy enough that they will apply immense pressure on the Senators to do something to “solve the problem.” And they can only solve the problems by voting to remove Trump from office.
And that is how we get to 67 Senators. For the first time I can see the possibility of impeachment. POSSIBILITY, not certainty. Because, of course those Senators are going to resist like fire having to cast that vote. And Trump is not going to make it easy on them, there is no deal they can make he will accept. He will give them all the big middle finger and defy them to vote with Chuck Shumer and impeach him.
And then he’ll go out raging against them, and calling on his base of supporters to remove them from office.
Remember how the GOP noise machine raged against Sen. Jim Jeffords who switched parties and joined the Democrats? Multiply that by about 10 and you have an approximation the right wing meltdown will be like if 20 GOP Senators vote to impeach Trump. Uphill sledding? Sure.
But, for the first time you can see an end to the forest through the distant trees. We might just possibly get there. There’s a ray of light, maybe.