Republicans ready to ditch Trump if Warren closes in
The moment Republicans figure Donald Trump cannot keep Massachusetts senator Elizabeth Warren out of the White House is the moment they decide he has to go.
The rapidity with which GOP senators went from declaring him an unfit con man in 2016 to becoming bootlickers after his victory was head-snapping. But it should also serve as a reminder of how quickly these people can change their minds when the need arises.
In return for a couple of supreme court judges and because they were afraid of his base they have put up with Trump’s lies, porn star payoffs and utterly unRepublican stance on trade, deficit spending, immigration and security.
They also figured that if they pandered to his narcissism and as long as there were enough grown-ups surrounding him he couldn t do too much damage. Why, he might even grow into the job.
That hasn’t panned out. Now, Republicans are starting to look at the clock, the polls and the inescapable fact that Trump is not making America great again
quite the contrary. He is doing huge damage to the country and its global relationships.
Day by day, the evidence hardens that Trump put the squeeze on Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky to help his re-election, which would be illegal. He wanted a statement from Zelensky he could use to slime former vice-president Joe Biden and discredit the findings of special counsel Robert Mueller that the Kremlin had helped put him in office.
If Zelensky obliged, Trump would give him an Oval Office meeting and the weapons Ukraine needed to hold off Russian-backed revanchists in the Donbas. If not, nice country you’ve got there, Volodymyr, would be a shame to let more of it be annexed by my good friend Vladimir Putin.
The evidence is coming directly from Trump’s own mouth and that of his acting chief of staff, Mick Mulvaney; from the transcript of a telephone conversation between Trump and Zelensky that the White House itself edited before releasing; and from the sworn statements of Trump administration appointees. The latter confirm that Trump and his inner circle knew what they were doing had to be covered up.
This is not, as Trump’s spokesperson would have it, “a co-ordinated smear campaign by far-left lawmakers and radical, unelected bureaucrats waging war in the constitution” with “selective leaks” from “secretive meetings” based on “triple hearsay”.
Serious Republicans politicians know these talking points are a sham. They were appalled when Trump tweeted on Tuesday that he was being lynched, as if he were an African-American being strung from a tree by the Ku Klux Klan.
The cracks are starting to show. Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell, who more than anything else cares about maintaining a Republican majority in the upper chamber in 2020, unloaded in the Washington Post on Trump s between-golf-rounds decision to abandon the Syrian Kurds. On Tuesday, he declined to defend Trump in a lie.
More importantly, he is indicating that if and when the House of Representatives does impeach Trump, he will not seek a Senate vote to dismiss the matter, as he could, but is ready to put the president on trial. And if he’s ready for a trial, I’d wager he’s ready for a conviction. Why? Because, love
McConnell or loathe him, he is a politician and he has to know that Trump means disaster for his party. The hard-core Trump base is not a winning coalition 2016 was a fluke decided by 70,000 votes in three states.
The quicker Trump is gone, the more chance the Republicans have of finding and fielding a credible alternative to the Democrat, who, as of today, looks to be Warren, a genuine populist terrifying to Republican donors.
● Barber is a freelance journalist based in Washington.