January 15 , 2021
Trump Impeached Again
Less than a year after winning a Senate vote on his first impeachment, Trump is staggering to the end of his four years in office facing the prospect of a second impeachment, this time for inciting a mob to engage in insurrection against the government of the United States. This time, however, he does not have a solid wall of Republican support. The dam may have broken wide open, and Trump faces an humiliation none could have predicted back on election day last November.
Trump got here because he simply could not psychologically accept that he had lost the election to Joe Biden, and by a wide margin of 7 million votes. It was not close. For the last two months, he and his supporters have put forth a false narrative of lies that claimed that vast amounts of voter fraud had deprived him of his rightful victory. Too many Republican congressmen and senators endorsed and supported this lie. For weeks only a few Republicans would acknowledge Biden’s victory and that he was the President-elect. But after the Electoral College met and voted in mid-December, most serious Republicans finally gave in, though the extremists especially in the House still clung to their falsehoods.
Trump at this point was running out of options. The final step to certifying that Joe Biden is to be the next President would come on January 6, when Congress would meet and accept the Electoral Votes of each state, a process presided over and certified by the Vice-President in his role as the “President of the Senate” as spelled out in the Constitution. This was a thankless task for Mike Pence, who had spent the last four years in abject devotion to Trump no matter what Trump did or said. But now Trump was demanding that Pence reject the certification of Biden’s win and somehow allow Trump to be declared the victor of the election. Pence had no legal basis to do this, and made that clear. Trump responded by attacking Pence, and telling his base that Pence just needed to show some courage. Trump then called for his supporters to gather in DC on January 6 and march on Congress to push them to block Biden’s win.
This is where things really got out of control. While the House and Senate were meeting to do what is normally a purely ceremonial task, but was now infused with the drama of some Republicans objecting to the count and forcing Pence to break with Trump’s demands or break the law, a mob of five thousand or so MAGA fanatics attacked the US Capitol. The police completely failed to protect the building, and the Congress was overrun with rioters who defaced the House and Senate. Representatives and Senators were hurried to safety. Some in the crowd were even chanting “hang Mike Pence”, while a gallow had been set up as a prop outside the building. A police officer was killed and another beaten with a pole carrying an American flag. Human feces was smeared inside the building. Trump meanwhile watched all of this on television and said not one word calling on the mob to disband and go home.
Trump finally went too far for even the Republicans. Democrats have rapidly drawn up a single article of impeachment, accusing Trump of “incitement of insurrection” and that he “gravely endangered the security of the United States and its institutions of Government”. Unlike last time, several Republicans in the House, including Liz Cheney, the third-highest ranking and daughter of Vice-President Dick Cheney, have stated they will vote for impeachment. Even more ominous for Trump is that Mitch McConnell has signaled he will not lift a finger to support Trump in the Senate. Impeachment by the House requires simple majority, which the Democrats have, but conviction and removal by the Senate requires 67 Senators, and the Democrats have only 50. But if 17 Republicans vote to convict, Trump will suffer the shame of being the only US President ever to be impeached and removed by Congress (Nixon resigned rather than face that).
In the end it will come down to whether McConnell wants to save Trump from this or not. For four years, every Republican was afraid to cross Trump because of the power he had over the Republican base voters. They adore Trump and in a conflict, no Republican could stand up to that. But now Trump is finished politically. He no longer will have the power to make or break a Republican politician. McConnell realizes this, and may decide it is finally the time to topple Trump completely. By removing Trump, it will mean that Trump cannot run for President in 2024, and that he is banished from politics. Trump’s antics have already cost him his biggest megaphone and direct link to his base, his Twitter account, which has been permanently shut down.
The real question that the Republican Party will need to reckon with is what comes after Trump? The party is now deeply split between those who deal with reality, and those who are marinating in all sorts of bizarre conspiracy theories, from a stolen election to QAnon. Republicans cannot win elections with just their crazy voters. They need sane, rational, college-educated professionals to vote for the party if they want to have any chance of winning House and Senate races in purple areas or being competitive for the White House. But will the crazy part of the Republican coalition allow the sane elements to reassert control after Trump has been metaphorically publicly beheaded by that same party? Or is the Republican Party headed for a rupture within that will leave it a smoldering ruin, to be replaced by something else?
