Impeachment: The coming GOP schism
Now that the House has impeached Trump for inciting the Jan. 6 Capitol assault, a number of questions loom, said Andrew Desiderio and Kyle Cheney in Politico.com. It’s unclear when House Speaker Nancy Pelosi will transmit the impeachment article and a Senate trial might begin. Some Republicans claim that the Senate can’t impeach an ex-president, but courts are likely to leave that decision up to the Senate itself. When the trial does begin, will Trump find a lawyer to defend him? Then there’s the most pressing question: “How likely is a conviction?” This time, a two-thirds majority of the Senate—67 votes—is a real possibility, given the “markedly different posture” of Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, who’s furious at Trump and said this week the mob “was fed lies” and “provoked by the president.” If McConnell turns thumbs down on Trump, “it’s easy to see at least 16 other Republicans joining him.”
Republicans have a “clear and obvious motivation” to impeach, said Aaron Blake in The Washington Post: to take the chaos-creating Trump out of the running for 2024. But they have to decide whether neutering him is “worth the immediate pain” of enraging his base. It’s the only way for the party to move forward, said David French in TheDispatch .com. Sadly, his core supporters have become an insurrection movement with Trump as its “spiritual and operational leader.”
His hold on that movement is largely built “on the perception that he wins, time and again, against the most hated enemies of the Right.” That narrative “has to shift, dramatically, once and for all.” A Senate conviction and then prosecution for a host of crimes will reveal him to be a “con man” and a loser.
The stakes for the GOP are high, said Chris Cillizza in CNN.com. Republican Sen. Rand Paul warns that impeachment will “destroy the party,” splintering it between establishment and Trumpist wings. Given how many Republicans still defend Trump’s attempt to overturn the election, that rupture is necessary, said Kevin Williamson in NationalReview.com. Perhaps one of the “surviving halves would be worth joining, worth voting for, worth trusting.” Republicans who are “clinging to Trump” are making “a titanic mistake, and I am rooting for the iceberg.” For the good of the party and the country, Trumpism must “go down with the ship.”