Impeached

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/19/opinion/trump-impeachment-republicans.html

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He was impeached on only two counts, but President Trump has violated his oath of office in so many other ways as well — lying constantly, obstructing justice, encouraging criminal behavior, corruptly profiting off his office, refusing to defend the United States against foreign attacks and more.

What did congressional Republicans have to say in response yesterday, as they voted unanimously against impeachment? It was like bad satire. They compared Trump’s impeachment both to Jesus Christ’s crucifixion and to the 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor that killed more than 2,400 Americans. Trump, at a Michigan rally last night, offered his usual childish insults, including one about a recently deceased member of Congress who had represented Michigan for six decades.

I tend generally toward optimism, but this is a dark moment for America. And 2020 will be a very important year.

For more …

On the new episode of “The Argument,” Ross Douthat, Michelle Goldberg and I debate why the impeachment inquiry hasn’t changed almost anyone’s mind.

Joanne Freeman, a Yale historian, in response to the notion that impeachment would overturn the 2016 election: “An impeachment doesn’t overturn an election. The folks who designed the electoral process? They included impeachment too. Not contradictory.”

James Martin, SJ, a Jesuit priest, on the argument that Pontius Pilate afforded more rights to Jesus than Democrats have afforded Trump: “Pilate had Jesus beaten and whipped, thrown into jail overnight, marched through the streets carrying his cross, and then nailed to that cross until he died. Comparing the treatment received by the President to what Jesus suffered is absurd. Also, only one of them is sinless.”

The Atlantic’s David Frum on Republicans’ (factually incorrect) calls for due process:

In case you have forgotten, President Due Process urged police to bang arrested suspects’ heads against car doors. President Due Process urged the death penalty for people who invoke the Whistleblower statute. President Due Process urged forms of torture ‘a hell of a lot worse than waterboarding’ against persons suspected of terrorism. President Due Process speculated that ‘second amendment people’ should assassinate Hillary Clinton. President Due Process not only urged but *did* ban travel to the United States on the basis of religious faith. And look finally — this impeachment is taking place precisely because President Due Process tried corruptly to muscle a dependent country to launch a bogus show trial against President Due Process’s most likely campaign opponent in 2020.

My colleague Bret Stephens:

There are people who believe that law, morality, traditions and institutions are at least as important to the preservation of freedom as the will of the people. Such people are called conservative. What Republicans are now doing with their lock step opposition to impeachment — and with their indifference to the behavior that brought impeachment about — is not conservative. It is the abdication of principle to power. I might think differently about impeachment if Trump had shown any sense of contrition. Or if Republicans had shown any inclination to censure him. But Trump hasn’t, and they haven’t.

The Times editorial board:

There’s plenty of blame to go around for the intense — really, infantilizing — degree of polarization that has overwhelmed American politics across the past 40 years. But the nihilism of this moment — the trashing of constitutional safeguards, the scorn for facts, the embrace of corruption, the indifference to historical precedent and to foreign interference in American politics — is due principally to cowardice and opportunism on the part of Republican leaders who have chosen to reject their party’s past standards and positions and instead follow Donald Trump, all the way down.

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