With predictable partisan intransigence, conservative and liberal commentators gave no impeachment ground on the Sunday news shows.
The conservative mantra: President Trump acted within his legal authority and responsibility as president. Encapsulating this sentiment on NBC’s Meet the Press, Hugh Hewitt insisted that there are no credible grounds for impeachment.
The liberal mantra was quite different: Trump abused his office in an effort to damage his presumptive 2020 election challenger. Also interviewed on Meet the Press, Democratic Sen. Dick Durbin asserted that “the Senate is on trial. And I hope, at the end of the day, enough Republican senators will understand: History will find you. Make certain that you make a decision that you can live with in terms of our Constitution and your own professional career.”
Could we really have expected anything else?
Inside the Senate and on the cable news networks, this how it’s going to be until senators register their verdict on the president’s conduct.
The simple fact is that Democrats want Trump gone or damaged. And if, as seems very likely, they can’t get the former until January 2021 at the earliest, they’ll happily accept the latter. That means we should expect lots of liberal showmanship and regular doses of Adam Schiff’s faux-lament that it has come to it. And precluding Alabama’s Doug Jones (who faces a tough reelection fight), expect Democratic senators to describe their outrage at Trump eloquently.
Oh, and bank on lots of media columns on the powerful testimony that lays waste to Trump’s presidency and Republican efforts to avoid participation in its destruction.
On the flip side, expect few if any Republican votes to shift against Trump. Yes, it’s clear that Trump showed poor judgment on Ukraine, pressuring a reformist leader to investigate a political opponent and dangling much-needed aid as a tool of persuasion. Ukranian President Volodymyr Zelensky has had to defend Trump, whatever he might think in private. Yet Republicans know that Trump is their best bet for retaining power in January 2021 — their best bet to withstand a left-wing president and to keep putting conservative judges on the federal bench. Expect Republicans Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski to push for new witnesses to be allowed to testify but not too hard.
Still, the absence of personally incriminating communication evidence against Trump means that the case for conviction is less watertight than Democrats represent. To convict Trump based on hearsay evidence, the TV tales of indicted individuals, and the testimony of a few good men and women would be to disregard those who elected Trump. It would damage the nation’s democratic fabric.
So, get ready for at least a week or two of partisan posturing. Then we can enjoy what’s sure to be one of the most acrimonious presidential campaigns in recent memory.
