USA TODAY International Edition
Senate should vote to dismiss impeachment
Spare us a long trial that won’t end in conviction
If House Democrats get their way, they’ll vote to send articles of impeachment against President Donald Trump to the Senate in a matter of weeks. What should happen next is simple: The Senate should move quickly to vote on a resolution dismissing the House impeachment charges by a simple majority vote.
This would spare the nation the political agony of a drawn- out Senate trial, where the outcome is a foregone conclusion and the only result will be further polarization. That would allow the question of who is going to serve as president of the United States to be decided by America’s voters, the people who should decide it.
House Democrats have made clear that their move for impeachment has nothing to do with the Framers’ vision of impeachment. For House Democrats, it’s not about defending the Constitution against a usurper; it’s merely a political response to an election they still cannot believe they lost. They’ve made clear from even before President Trump was inaugurated that they believe him to be an illegitimate president, and every action they’ve taken proves their determination to kowtow to their left- wing base, which demands “resistance” in all its forms.
First, they wanted to remove him over the allegation that he was a traitor who had worked with Russians to undermine our freedoms in the 2016 election. When that narrative collapsed after a two- year investigation failed to prove it, they shifted to “obstruction of justice.” But that effort, too, came up short, so they have shifted to this new charge — that he abused his office by seeking the assistance of a foreign government for personal political gain.
But the official record of the president’s phone call with the Ukrainian president shows no such thing. It does not show a quid pro quo, it does not show an offer of a bribe, it does not reveal the existence of a threat.
Moreover, the Democrats’ likely second article of impeachment — that moving the official record of the phone call from one server to another is evidence of an attempt to “cover up” wrongdoing — doesn’t hold water, either. It turns out the decision to move similar records happened long ago and was not confined to this one phone call.
Convicting an impeached president requires a two- thirds vote. That’s 67 senators. But Democrats only have 47 ( if we assume Maine’s Angus King and Vermont’s Bernie Sanders, two independents who caucus with Senate Democrats, behave as Democrats on this vote). Thus, it would require 20 Republican senators to vote to convict. That’s just not going to happen.
The Senate should plan for a motion to dismiss the House’s charges as soon as they come over, and it only requires a simple majority vote to pass. In the 1999 Senate impeachment trial of President Bill Clinton, West Virginia Sen. Robert Byrd offered a motion to dismiss the House charges before the Senate trial began. Because Democrats were then in the minority, the motion failed.
Now, for the first time during a potential impeachment trial, the Senate is controlled by the same party as that of the president. There are 53 Republicans in the Senate, and if they all vote to dismiss the charges, the trial could be over before it begins.
Here’s an even bolder play for Majority Leader Mitch McConnell: Circulate a letter to your GOP Senate colleagues, declaring that the undersigned will vote to dismiss House articles of impeachment on the Ukraine matter. Once there are at least 51 signatures on it, release the letter publicly and declare that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi might as well fold the impeachment circus tent now.
Speaker Pelosi could then continue with impeachment proceedings, knowing her effort would be seen as nothing but political, since conviction and removal of the president from office would be off the table. Or she could shut down the circus and prepare to do battle on terrain more appropriate for deciding who gets to serve as president — the electoral battlefield we’ve used quite well for close to 250 years.
The path is clear. Will McConnell make the play?