The red line
Texas Republicans should emulate Goldwater’s conscience of a conservative.
Where is the red line? Houston’s Republicans in Washington need to start asking themselves this question.
It is a question that former U.S. Sen. Barry Goldwater had to confront four decades ago.
A gyre of scandal had engulfed President Richard Nixon. Impeachment talks were proceeding. The Republican Party looked to Sen. Goldwater of Arizona — Mr. Conservative himself — to help determine if Nixon could survive an impeachment conviction in the Senate and, if necessary, convince the president to resign.
Goldwater worked with his colleagues to count the votes that had been tallied by Nixon’s White House counsel. As the former presidential candidate made his way through the senators and their likely decisions, Goldwater added one more name to the list — his own.
While allegations of obstruction of justice, contempt of Congress, illegally bombing Cambodia and failing to pay taxes left the Arizona senator unpersuaded, Goldwater had to admit that he would probably vote to convict Nixon on one charge: abuse of power.
Nixon had been caught on tape instructing his chief of staff to have the CIA put pressure on the FBI to drop their investigation into the Watergate break-in.
That was Goldwater’s red line. In that moment, he demonstrated the true conscience of a conservative. We have to wonder whether that conscience is still alive in the Republican Party.
Just this past Monday, Adam Entous and Ellen Nakashima from the Washington Post reported that Donald Trump had attempted the same sort of interference. According to current and former officials, Trump appealed to the director of national intelligence and the director of the National Security Agency to publicly deny the existence of any evidence of collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia during the 2016 election. That collusion is the subject of an FBI investigation currently headed by special counsel and former FBI director Robert Mueller.
Did Trump, like Nixon, abuse the power of his office? This is just one of many questions that our elected representatives have to ask themselves about the man in the Oval Office.
Was it obstruction of justice when Trump fired former FBI director James Comey? Is Trump violating the emoluments clause because the Trump Organization continues to accept payments from foreign governments?
Perhaps conservative columnist Charles Krauthammer put it best when he wrote earlier this month that Trump risks breaking the guardrails of our republic. As long as Republicans control the House and Senate, they have a responsibility to strengthen these guardrails before some core part of our nation is truly shattered.
Goldwater made the hard choice at the time, but partisan allegiance was no excuse for a president who crossed a red line. Where is that red line for Trump? Is a Republican Congress willing to actively investigate whether that line has been crossed?
More than 40 years ago, Barry Goldwater had to face the challenge of putting country ahead of party.
And in your heart, congressmen and senators, you know he was right.
Goldwater made the hard choice at the time, but partisan allegiance was no excuse for a president who crossed a red line. Where is that red line for Trump?