The Senate will find Trump guilty of the charges of impeachment brought against him. To me it seems completely obvious that this will be the outcome, but apparently I’m alone in this conclusion based upon my what I read, so I guess I’ll explain my thinking.
The Republican party hates this man more than the Democrats, far and away, and wants him gone more than anyone. He has ruined any remaining goodwill the American people had towards them outside of grievance and greed, and made the greatest of their ranks look like sycophants and hypocrites. At the end of the day, however, he is still the man that got their party into power and controls the levers of power, so they work together to get through the day. They wait for the Democrats, the team that should have momentum and clear incentive on their side, to bring the charges against him. After that, they can have Pence in power, a much more palatable pawn for their political machinations. Too bad for them the Democrats are cowards.
Yet finally they have something grand enough, obviously heinous enough, and as a bonus, in the realm of foreign policy where it is easy for the two parties to have bi-partisan agreement relative to the domestic front, that they move forward. The House has the numbers to get it through, the Senate are where they do not. Yet what comes about with impeachment proceeding? A huge muckraking of Trump and his clearly stinking corruption, a total contamination of the man and all he touches, and who shall judge his fate?
Senator Mitt Romney, the man who held a press conference in 2016 condemning Trump as an existential threat and was then humiliated by him with his groveling dinner picture; Senator Ted Cruz, the man whose wife’s appearance was mocked by Trump and whose father’s reputation was smeared; Senator Ben Sasse, a former university president who has painted his entire political motivations from a place of moral righteousness and now must regularly defend a serial abuser of women and any sense of presidential dignity; Senator Marco Rubio, the former next great hope of the party humiliated by Trump in the 2016 election; Senator Lindsay Graham, the best-friend of John McCain and at one point one of Trump’s greatest critics, now turned admirer.
These are just five small write ups for five examples of the Republican Senators that would have easy cause to vote Trump guilty and bring Pence in. We should not assume that just because they have acted as sycophants that they agree with the boss. They had no real option if they hoped for any kind of power and leverage in the current political lay of the land. They needed to play the game, and the game of the Don requires clear heapings of praise and exhibitions of loyalty. Yet memories are long, and we should have no reason to assume the party holds any real loyalty to Don Presidente..
Even on a cynical level, they will meet as a caucus and find just the right members as indicated by intensely local polling and analysis to vote guilty, so the verdict will pass, but most of the members can this way save their political goodwill with the voters at home who love Trump’s authoritarianism. They are sick of having to defend his ludicrous and utterly amoral actions to the press and the voters at home, and thereby contributing to our social-moral degradation, but do so to save political face and power. This way, they can finally indicate with one vote their true opinions in the ledger of history, as well as get rid of the man they detest on a personal, political, and moral level. Modern political history shows us that the American electorate is fickle and has no long term memory at all. Any Republican senator elected or re-elected in 2018 (including Cruz and Romney) has until 2024 to face their public’s judgement. Their voters have time to adopt new grievances by then, and will be ready to move past Trump the man in the aims of taking down the eternally wicked Dems.
I don’t think this seems like that wild of speculation, but I haven’t really read it anywhere, so I figured I might as well write it then, so here you go, another taste of my musings.