President Donald Trump’s critics and devotees, for all their differences, agree on one thing: in his impeachment trial, he is almost certain to be acquitted by the U.S. Senate’s Republican majority. Washington Post opinion writer Jennifer Rubin, a Never Trump conservative, notes in a January 23 column that “virtually all, if not all, Senate Republicans will vote to acquit President Trump” — and the Republican Party on the whole, she asserts, might pay a heavy price for it in November’s election.
Senate Republicans, Rubin writes, have “told us up front they were going to let (Trump) off, removing even the pretense of adhering to their oaths. They told us they were unserious about their oaths not by pointing to facts or to valid legal arguments, but by repeating cable TV news talking points that are irrelevant — ‘the House was unfair!’ — or provably false: e.g., ‘Trump was concerned about corruption.’ That said, the way they are going about this puts the interests of Trump — whom most of them know is guilty as charged and would have been impeached long ago if a Democrat — above their own.”
In the longrun, Rubin stresses, defending Trump when they know he is guilty on two articles of impeachment could do considerable damage to the Republican Party. Continue reading.