Of course, many prefer to cast aspersions upon others’ dirty houses over cleaning their own house, especially when they think that those others are as dirty or dirtier.
Here’s the thing about that, though. When you clean your own house, you claim the moral high ground. You establish yourself as the more honest player on the field, as the one who elevates duty over finger-pointing and gamesmanship, and the one who thus deserves those looking for someone “good” to support. The 1974 Republicans ushered Nixon out, and history recalls them fondly.
So it goes. Trump’s defenders reject the notion that he inflamed the crowd to the point of it rioting. Additionally, more than a couple legal minds argue that the case for incitement, which is what Pelosi et al chose to allege, is legally weak. Removal from office via impeachment is not, however, a letter-of-the-law matter, decided as it is by the Senate (Alan Dershowitz’s argument that SCOTUS can overrule the Senate notwithstanding). If 67 Senators vote to defenestrate Trump, out he will go, and that’ll be the end of his career in politics. The process, and the decision, are ultimately matters of politics, not law.
As such, as matters of politics, the GOP is faced with a political decision: Throw in with the Democrats, who’ve been slavering for Trump’s orange scalp for 50 months, what they’ve desired virtually to the exclusion of everything else, including the health of the country. Or, reject this mostly symbolic impeachment effort, and let Trump simply leave office in 7 days as scheduled. The only practical difference is that, if removed, he can be denied public office forever after (though I think the odds of him trying, let alone succeeding, rather low).
The practical isn’t the driver, however. The calculus at hand is whether the party would be better off listening to the Trump base, who feels he’s been unfairly treated since they elected him, who think that the Capitol riot was not his doing, and who the party needs going forward, or agreeing that this last episode was a back-breaker, that the pillaging of the Capitol was the product of his electoral allegations and aggressive rhetoric, and symbolically purging him from the party at the risk of alienating his supporters
And, risk an incendiary blow-back come Election day, as has been rumored, though caving into the heckler’s veto carries its own peril.
Rock, meet hard place, and one would need a crystal ball to guess which would be better.
No matter which way the GOP leadership chooses to go, it’ll anger a chunk of the party’s constituency. Both choices will be leveraged by the Democrats, which, ironically, serves to remove the Left from the calculus. Then there’s the matter of Future-Trump, who I highly doubt will quietly retire to Mar-A-Lago. This, too, enters into the calculus. If the GOP opts not to align with the impeach/remove crowd, Trump will hardly be grateful, and instead continue his accusations of disloyalty and fecklessness (accusations that have translated to his acolytes screaming “Traitor!” at insufficiently supportive GOPers). If the party opts to remove him from office, he’ll rant about that as well. Either way, though, Trump’ll do more to tear down the GOP that he’ll believe abandoned him unjustly than attack the Democrats and their policies. So, this, too, gets removed from the calculus.
What’s left is taking a moral high road vs trying to appease a crowd that’s already alienated and not likely to consider “we didn’t impeach him” anything more than a booby prize.
The conclusion? There’s no good answer for the GOP, but the least-worst is to impeach and remove. The short-term fallout will be bad either way, but the long-term benefit of doing the right thing is a good piece of foundation to rebuild upon.
And, a footnote, or rather a piece of unsolicited advice. “I told you so!” hurts more than it helps. Rein in your rage, and contribute to solution rather than division.
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How is impeaching Trump (again) going to benefit our country? I believe there is a much bigger issue going on and one that is doing great damage and division within our country. If you look at the reporting of the capital riot vs the riots we have seen over the last seven months in the United States, it’s like night and day. Do you remember the time the anti Kavanaugh protesters (a bunch of leftists) stormed into the U.S. Senate building and pretty much held people hostage? How many people did the DC police shoot? The answer is zero. The glaring difference on how this is being treated vs how we have seen far larger and more deadly riots over the last seven months in the U.S. in the wake of George Floyd, dying of a fentanyl overdose, Jacob Blake being shot because he attacked a cop with a knife. We’ve had situations where we had enormous numbers of cities which have been burned. We had a literal insurrection with Chaz and other things, the Red house in Portland. We have had people in DC many months ago where tens of thousands of leftists converged on the city and began burning things, looting and openly calling for political violence and acting like complete fanatics. Of course, this was labeled a mostly peaceful protest. There is that famous image from Kenosha where the Wendy Restaurant is burning and a CNN pundit is standing right in front and stating its fiery but a mostly peaceful protest. We have seen dozens of people killed and untold thousands of injuries across many cities. We have had billions in property damage and a political establishment that by and large will not call them out. In fact we have had members of congress kneel down in solidarity with people who openly profess themselves to be communists and who are openly violent. At no point, has the MSM taken any steps to try and identify these people to be prosecuted and punished. Corporations fly their logos. The MSM openly condones Antifa by saying they are not even a group, they are just an idea, which is completely crazy. Now you have the Capital riot. It was a riot, certainly not a protest and not very unhelpful. You have a situation now, where MSM pundits, corporate billionaires are telling us we need to upend the way we do business because of one specific riot that lasted two hours as opposed to all the other riots we have seen that in some cases they have explicitly endorsed. Something is desperately wrong with a system in which this is happening.
See all those things you mention? Did you condemn them when they happened? If so, good.
Did you criticize the Left for their inaction/condoning? If so, good.
If you don’t do the same when “your team” does that sort of shit, you’re engaging in hypocritical whataboutism.
You are right, there is something very wrong with what’s going on. Standing in defense of incendiary rhetoric and the resultant mob isn’t going to fix it.
Yes, the hypocrisy of the LSM and the Democrats (but I repeat myself) is simply breathtaking. And the double standards involved are blatant. If the Pubs want to avoid a schism in the party, the GOPe will need to start showing a spine and at least try to fight back against the Dems. We already know the Dems aren’t going to clean up their act, and we also have to keep in mind that their coalition is weak as well. Their radical left wing isn’t particularly enamored with the standard leftists that compose the rest of their party.