No doubt you’ve heard Republicans whining about the impeachment of President Trump being unfair, even invalid, because Democrats passed it on a strictly party-line vote. Hell, you’ve probably even heard some Democrats bemoaning this fact.
Granted, votes for the only other presidents formally impeached – namely Andrew Johnson and Bill Clinton – were bipartisan. But that’s only because the members of no party in US history have ever been so afraid to vote against a corrupt president than Republicans, for some cult-like reason, are to vote against this one. This, no matter how much clear and convincing evidence Democrats present on Trump’s guilt of high crimes and misdemeanors.
But folks, here in a nutshell is the dynamic afoot. Republicans are accusing Democrats of a partisan impeachment simply because they’re afraid Trump will use his bullying Twitter page to get voters to oust them – his guilt and the welfare of the country be damned.
Remarkably, the political hex he has on them is such that even retiring Republicans, like Senator Lamar Alexander of Tennessee, are afraid of him. Only that explains this profile in cowardice he showed last night:
He says Democratic House impeachment managers proved their case — that Trump withheld aid and a White House meeting for his desired investigations and that it was ‘inappropriate.’ He said he just doesn’t think Trump’s actions are worthy of removal from office.
(The Washington Post, January 31, 2020)
This from a man who thought Clinton lying about having sex with an intern was worthy of removal from office. The hypocrisy here seems worthy of a word far more damning.
Incidentally, Alexander is also betraying that politicians often want to continue sucking on their party’s money-generating tit even after they retire.
As for the Republicans bitching about partisanship, this is rather like the neighbor in your row house bitching at you for calling the fire department to put out a fire in your house. Obviously, it would only be a matter of time before that fire engulfs his too.
But that’s the kind of “crazy” thinking that passes for logic in the Republican Party these days – as William Taylor, former US ambassador to Ukraine, famously decried. Alas, Republicans seem all too happy to dance while Trump fiddles … and America burns.
An equally fateful word describes this craziness: tribalism. As it happens, I have written about this in many commentaries, most notably in “Tribalism and Dysfunction in American Politics,” June 24, 2018, “Republicans Abandon Faith and Values to Hail Trump as ‘Chosen by God’,” March 6, 2019, and in “Impeachment Vote Is as Much about Tribalism as Trumpism,” November 3, 2019.
The point is that Republicans established long ago that it is an article of faith for them to stand with Trump come hell or high water. In other words, they’re the craven ones who ensured this could only be a partisan impeachment. But, in fairness to Alexander, no Republican personifies their Damoclean faith more than Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina.
Meanwhile, Alan Dershowitz managed to make a mockery of both Harvard University as the nation’s preeminent law school and the US Senate as the world’s most deliberative body. Nothing demonstrates this quite like the Bill Bramhall cartoon in today’s edition of the New York Daily News.
It features Dershowitz in the well of the Senate summing up the defense against the articles of impeachment at issue. Bramhall has him intoning – with Ciceronian aplomb – a take on the immortal words Trump uttered on that infamous Access Hollywood tape:
In other words – when you’re a star, they let you do it.
And you probably thought this once-respected lawyer could fall no further from grace after being outed as a frequent flyer on Jeffrey Epstein’s “Lolita Express” … to his pedophile island.
Yet here was Dershowitz making the patently absurd argument that Trump can abuse his power any way he wants, so long as he assures the American people that he’s doing it for them. You can’t make this sh*t up! With all due respect to George Orwell, imagine the “American Dystopia” if acquittal means that, of all the presidents in US history, this one can do no wrong …
I thought I had Trump’s defense team pegged when I dismissed them as the three stooges. I owe Moe, Larry, and Curley an apology.
But I cannot overstate the national shame of his team reducing US senators to a bunch of starstruck groupies who would let Trump have his way – not only with them but with the country too.
Finally, is it just me or do you agree that the words of the Senate Chaplain’s opening prayer have been the most probing, provocative, and persuasive spoken each day of this impeachment trial…?
He is Rear Adm. Barry C. Black, and he’s the first black American to serve in this revered position. More to the point, his words are invariably as prescriptive as those of Confucius, redemptive as those of Christ, and predictive as those of Gibran. Not to mention that he delivers them in tones as dulcet as those of Robeson.
Related commentaries:
Impeachment…three stooges…
Trump chosen by god…
Tribalism and dysfunction…
Tribalism vs Trumpism…
Jeffrey Epstein…
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