Anyone who thinks Donald Trump would even take the time to learn what the rules are before he broke them is delusional. The Donald has lived his entire life in a world where the rules don’t apply to him. He’s even bragged about that. He’s not intentionally breaking the rules, because he doesn’t care what the rules are to start with.
So it’s not going to take much digging to come up with a smoking gun bad enough to get Trump convicted of some malfeasance or other, and when the rat is on the table, a few carefully-selected Republicans in the Senate will have to “vote with their consciouses” and Donnie won’t be president anymore.
But here’s the thing. Should that happen, the Republican Party will let out a huge sigh of relief. The Republicans right now are paddling a canoe in choppy waters with a fizzing hand grenade rolling around in the boat. The ones doing the paddling know that if the hand grenade goes off, the boat sinks.
Along come the Democrats, who say, “We demand that you throw that hand grenade overboard!” The Republicans protest, but in the end they reluctantly jettison their deadly cargo. Not their fault! And so the same bastards that brought us WWE politics will be allowed to carry on, and suddenly the other clowns like Ted Cruz seem like rational guys (all of them are guys).
Or we could just suffer Trump for a couple extra months, and leave the hand grenade in their boat. The senate is in play in that scenario; just imagine the fallout within the party if Trump causes them to lose everything.
Ultimately, that’s what I want. I want the Republicans to suffer badly enough that they, ON THEIR OWN, not only throw the hand grenade overboard, but they also jettison the big-money assholes and foreign powers that paid to put that grenade in the boat in the first place. I want the Republican Party to be so damaged by this that they shift tack and try to be ACTUAL CONSERVATIVES.
If that happens, then perhaps Trump will have made America great again after all.
Here’s my objection to your premise: The alleged crime that the Democrats are convinced has finally tripped Donny up is cheating — using the powers of his office to try to cheat on the upcoming presidential election. And as you opened with, he doesn’t care what the rules are as he doesn’t think they apply to him. So if he doesn’t get nailed for the current attempt to cheat, he’ll try something else.
You seem quite confident that if he is on the ballot, he’ll lose. I worry that between the potential extremism of the Democratic candidate and the Don’s willingness to cheat, if the election is even close the result will be contested — to an extent I don’t want to consider.
Besides, I don’t think it matters. I don’t see enough senate Republicans with the slightest hint of a conscious upon which to vote. And I get it, you think the party will designate enough sacrificial lambs to make sure the Problem goes away.
I lack the faith to believe that the Republican Tribe in Washington is merely bad enough to have supported the current White House administration this far, but would gladly jettison their problem child this close to the elections.
In fact, I’d sooner believe that they’ll throw everything they have into getting him reelected, and then welcome anything that might give us four years of President Pence.
You make some very good points. From the pragmatic side there is, “what if the grenade doesn’t explode?” Any strategy based on the certainty that the grenade will explode has to recognize the utter disaster that would happen if it didn’t.
I am even more compelled by your indirect accusation that I’m playing fast and loose with right and wrong to achieve political objectives. It’s what I’m accusing the current administration of doing. Criminal Presidents should be impeached and removed from office, not because of any political agenda, but because we should all agree that we will not be governed by criminals. Fucker’s a criminal, kick him out. Let the politics fly where they may.
As far as Republican support, during Watergate the GOP looked solid until it gave way under the weight of the evidence. Watergate played out over a much longer period – Democrats are opting not to use the courts to coerce testimony from cabinet members in favor of getting concrete articles of impeachment before we get too deep in the election cycle.
But even so, the cracks are starting to show if you squint just right with Maximum Optimism. When Trump tweeted inappropriate stuff about a witness testifying RIGHT THEN before congress, several Republicans were openly critical of the move, and all of the R’s on the committee could do nothing but praise Marie Yovanovitch for her selfless service. On Friday, a handful of Republican Senators openly criticized Trump’s tweet. Sure most of them said (something like) “if everyone was against you, you would lash out, too.” Basically the “she was asking for it” defense. But a few cut no such slack.
I think the only thing that can save Trump from conviction is the Democrat’s rush to get it done quickly.
There was a part of me that thought when Donnie took office and was clearly unqualified that the whole thing had been a bait-and-switch scam, and we were actually electing Pence. But bizarrely, Trump seems to have more control over the government than he does over himself.
Pence and his brown-coats must be going rat-bonkers.
I apologize. The only thing I meant to accuse you of was optimism.
No need to apologize at all; I shouldn’t have use the word “accuse” in my response. You just brought up an interesting thought I wanted to expand on.
as far as optimism goes, I have to admit I was optimistic last election as well. I thought no sane electorate could possibly put that guy in charge. I thought the women in this nation would make sure a lecherous philanderer and reprehensible human would not become president. It may be I still haven’t learned.
And now that Impeachment has happened, it’s pretty clear I was indeed guilty of optimism.
In their haste to get this done quickly, the Democrats have made it fairly easy for the Republicans to just dig in and deny documented facts. Unlike Watergate, where the prosecutors took the smoking gun and used it to pistol-whip deniers until the President’s party turned on him, in this case the smoking gun was merely presented to the country.
I do honestly believe that there are a lot of Republicans who wish to be rid of Trump, but some (more) are gong to have to fall on their swords politically for Trump to be convicted.
Which leaves my best-case scenario on the table, but my confidence reduced.
I had vainly hoped that pelosi would take the impeachment right to the brink, and then drop it with a majesterial “He’s not worth being the focus of our honourable tradition and institutions. He can’t understand the process or himself as subject to law. He’s a vain simpleton and shows clearly that he’s the creature of his tutor and inspiration, Roy Cohn. Hopeless. So we will save our strength and talents for the many worthwhile things that dont involve this gluttonous operator”
It might have worked. Now i fear impeachment will increase his value within the anti-rational world view of his supporters. “Assert it! We feel it’s right! We’re pretty certain that our Common Sense Reckonings + Hunches are the Golden Thread of American Values and Goals! Hurrah!”
Oh, my— its going to be ugly, and that curdled imbecile is going to be here a while. And then he’ll escape post presidential come-uppence by dying.
We’ll be left here with what we now know are half the population no better than him.
I cant understand how anyone could not be repulsed by trump – I remember him crashing the letterman show in the early 80’s and Dave deriding him, “What a publicity whore…”
Welp, it’s pretty clear now that my hypothetical Republicans who would “vote their consciences” to rid their canoe of the hand grenade have all decided to retire instead. There will not be a conviction, unless a miracle happens.
The Republican priority is preventing any evidence from being made public.
So theoretically my best-case scenario is in play. Only Trump has enough impact to cost the GOP the senate. Unfortunately, at this point the math is not looking good, unless more conservative women decide they’ve had enough of “grab ’em by the pussy” Trump.