I suppose one could admire how Mitch McConnell navigated the second impeachment of Donald Trump. He certainly showed some craftiness. But the Kentucky senator’s near-infinite cynicism is no long-term solution to the Republican Party’s difficulties.
Personally convinced of Trump’s guilt, McConnell didn’t feel he could lead his Senate caucus decisively against him. He also knew he couldn’t remain their leader if he took the minority position on conviction. Beyond that, he wanted to protect his members against primary challenges from pro-Trump mobs, so he had to provide some pre-textual excuse for an acquittal vote. But excusing Trump’s behavior threatened to cause money problems for the party, so he made sure to forcefully condemn the ex–president after he’d been acquitted.
I understand why McConnell opted to go this route. It wasn’t a good solution but it gave everyone a little bit of what they wanted and allowed him to live to fight another day.
The biggest drawback of this approach is that it allows Trump to live to fight another day, too. This may be why McConnell almost explicitly recommended that Trump be prosecuted for the January 6 insurrection. I guess we’ll see how that works out.
Sen. Lindsey Graham pointed out another drawback.
Graham griped on “Fox News Sunday” that McConnell’s speech condemning Trump for inciting the mob that stormed the Capitol last month will be used against Republicans as they try to retake control of Congress next year.
“I think Sen. McConnell’s speech, he got a load off his chest, obviously, but unfortunately he put a load on the back of Republicans,” Graham said. “That speech you will see in 2022 campaigns.”
Graham argued that Republican candidates running in battleground states such as Arizona and Georgia will be pressed on McConnell’s speech rebuking Trump, which would also place the burden on GOP incumbents to answer the question of whether they will support McConnell in the future.
In one sense, this is an unavoidable problem. Going forward, Republican candidates for office will have to say whether they stand with Trump or Trump’s accusers within the party. Senate candidates will, as Graham noted, have to state whether they, if elected, will support McConnell as the caucus leader.
But this would have even more true if McConnell had voted to convict Trump. What McConnell’s banking on is that GOP base opinion will move against Trump over time, and he’s probably correct to make that bet. But it’s exactly for this reason that the vote to acquit Trump will become an albatross for a lot of Republicans with the general electorate, and made much harder to defend by McConnell’s insistence that Trump was guilty and his strong suggestion that he should be prosecuted.
In a separate piece, I will explore the wider significance of McConnell’s condemnation and the overall trial. Here, I just want to say that McConnell is clever but he’s no magician. Far from killing off Trumpism, he kept its protagonist alive but wounded and thirty for revenge. He now will have to battle to the death to win this argument, and he won’t have many allies.
I agree with your analysis. Moscow Mitch is trying to have it both ways, and in the end Trumpism with or without Trump has failed. The Republican party will be in the doldrums for the next few years at least. The attack ads in two and four years will write themselves. On the one hand we have the Democrats who gave people money and handled vaccine distribution well and presides over an economic recovery, and on the other hand we have a party that supports violent mobs to overturn the constitution. It will be an absolute wipeout in the suburbs and my gut feeling is we will be able to retain the house
A very thoughtful and correct analysis of where things stand. For those of us living in the heart of Trumpistan, all of this just confirms that we are going to continue to have to politically function in an atmosphere of feverish hyper-enthusiasm for the worst fascistic tendencies of Trump and his Party. But maybe that was going to be baked into the cake regardless of the outcome of this whole saga. However much I might not like it, it is just not quite time yet for the death of Trumpism and all the explicit and implicit hatred and violence that remains to be delivered by his cult. We are just going to have to continue to slog forward and fight this for as long as it takes, and take the hits when they come. There really are no other options, if one wants to believe there is an end to this at some point. I believe there is. I might not live long enough to see it happen, but I know that it will.
Every Trumper I know is positively delirious with joy right now and thinks they have really owned the libs here. I no longer have the time or the energy to engage their insanity on any of this. I’ve severed those sorts of links some time ago and as far as I’m concerned, they can just percolate in their little pool of delusion. Their conscious ignorance of this entire process and what has just happened is simply not something that I am ever going to change. So best of luck to them. When the time comes and the piper must be paid, their fall is going to be a hard one. And if I happen to be there to see it I will just laugh and laugh and laugh in their faces.
The noose is tightening around the neck of this whole sordid movement, whether they realize it or not. Our goal has to be to keep people informed and engaged and aware of what needs to be done to keep moving forward, with the ultimate end being to very publicly drive a stake through the heart of this wretched movement. When those in power, like Graham, begin to get the first whiffs of the smell of that death, they will begin to bail on all of this like rats fleeing a sinking ship. We’re not there yet, but that is when we will know the end is near, though I expect most of us will not need the actions of craven sycophants like Graham to tell us what is happening. We will all know.
My loathing of all these people is simply beyond words. What they have done and continue to do to this country is unforgiveable. I can only hope that history calls them for what they are, the worst kind of traitors to democracy this country has ever known. In the meantime, with whatever time I have left on this earth, I will fight them like a cornered wolf would fight its fiercest and most dangerous enemy. Hate is a strong word, but that is what is in my heart for them, and I don’t see ridding myself of that feeling anytime soon.
Reading your article, I’m wondering if McConnell might have been wiser to get as many as possible to go along with conviction. It would have isolated the Trump-uber-alles faction, which is far smaller than the shameless tactical power over virtue faction — but it would have allowed center-right Republicans to justify coming home and would have begun the process of beating down Trump’s approval.
Yes, from a purely tactical point of view, the downsides of such an approach were larger than the way McConnell went. But it would have had the advantage of being the right thing to do. I tend to think that over the long term, that’s generally where it’s smart to be. Not just for political reasons but also because it leads to a far richer and more meaningful life. These people act as if they have no children or grandchildren. Heck, they act as if they expect to live forever. How many more years does McConnell have to overcome his already sullied reputation? He could have begun the process by making an honest choice and working to get his party to go along.
Would it have been better? I agree that most elected senators would love to dump Trump. The problem for them is that 80% of their voters disagree with them. Across the country, it is the Trump-uber-alles faction is the large majority, and growing larger as the country club republicans flee the party.
I think the only way that Republicans can possibly return to power in the near term is if Trumpism is defeated and he does not have the horses to defeat him. So he is going walk a tightrope, try to staunch the bleeding and hope the DOJ defeats Trumpism for him.
In other circles it is called a wing and a prayer.
Obviously, McConnell did not have the votes to convict, although I’d guess several more senators would have voted to convict had McConnell decided to fall on his sword. Instead he merely put off the final split. The fact that McConnell could not find the votes is to me a sure sign that the fight is over. The money Republicans and the educated Republicans lost. The Retrumplicans are the Republican party.
McConnell’s plan is to hope that Merrick Garland bails him out by charging Trump. A conviction might allow the sane(?) branch of the party to beat back the MAGAs. .
In 2022, Democrats should again run against Trump. Democrats are the reality party, proponents of good government, American leadership, and policies designed for the common good. Republicans are the party of disinformation, chaos in government, isolationism and Donald Trump.
The only objective in 2022 is to defeat the Retrumplicans. They need to lose again at least once and probably twice. .
I’m also interested to see the fallout from this. I fully expect Trump to try to have influence in the 2022 primaries and campaigns (how this plays out without the Twitter and Facebook remains to be seen). Will he sabotage his allies as well as his foes, by endorsing un-electable wackadoos? Will he give the the Party Poo-bahs daily heartburn?
Vanity Fair had an interesting piece suggesting Trump’s arc may well follow that of Palin after 2008:
This would be just desserts for the Republicans, who by tying themselves to Trump may have branded themselves as the Party of Yesterday’s News.
One can only hope…