Six on Impeachment: Mitt Romney changed the impeachment story, all by himself. Here are 3 reasons that matters; pearl-clutching Democrats who got massacred by Trump impeachment trial; Acquittal of Donald Trump to hit US soft power hard; ripping up Tr
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"The 28,000-page report that prompted impeachment proceedings in the Democrat-heavy House of Representatives was brushed aside after the case was taken up by the Senate, which refused Democrat requests to call witnesses.
America’s vaunted democracy, rule of law and clean government are being seen in a different light in the wake of its acquittal of the president.
With the US claiming it has a superior system that others should strive for, a poor message has been sent. It will now be more difficult to convince other governments to follow its lead. Similarly, its insistence that implementation of democracy and US-style market reforms will reduce corruption are now being questioned. American soft power has been damaged."
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"Who could blame you? Which of us would stay in a contest where one side felt free to make up its own rules? You can’t run a game that way. You also can’t run a country.
Someone should explain that to the right-wing political establishment, whose members are up in arms over House Speaker Nancy Pelosi ripping up a copy of Donald Trump’s State of the Union address moments after he finished delivering it. Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, that tower of Jell-O that walks like a man, pronounced this “pathetic.” Rep. Lee Zeldin called it “disgusting.” House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy dubbed it “petty.” And so on.
Which is, of course, hypocrisy on a galactic scale. A Trump enabler has about as much business criticizing a breach of decorum as Bill Cosby does teaching sex ed. Indeed, they have zero standing to lecture the rest of us on any question of right and wrong.
Especially given that GOP senators — and who, by this point, can deny that the “G” stands for gutless? — voted Wednesday to acquit Trump in his impeachment trial. With the singular, courageous exception of Mitt Romney, they chose to turn a blind eye to his use of public funds to extort political favors from a vulnerable ally.
Worse, a number of them even admitted that he did what he was accused of doing, rationalizing that he has learned his lesson now and won’t ever, ever do it again. As if the Constitution allows for mulligans and oopsies. As if Trump has ever shown the slightest ability to learn anything. No, the man will be emboldened by this — not chastened."
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"The Senate impeachment trial of Donald Trump was never a matter of law. It was always a matter of power. Mr. Trump has openly committed crimes and even confessed to crimes: What is at stake is whether anyone would hold him accountable. The way that Mr. Trump gets out of crimes is not by actually proving his innocence, but by declaring that crimes are not crimes when he commits them. This has been his strategy since his tutelage under the late mafia lawyer Roy Cohn, whose motto “I don’t want to know what the law is, I want to know who the judge is” shapes Mr. Trump’s worldview today.
In the Senate, Mr. Trump is being judged by a jury of his lackeys. The trial is a loyalty test for Republicans, who will decide whether to take their criminal President and crown him criminal king. It is a test of whether they will obey their own abuser: According to CBS, GOP Senators were allegedly warned that those who voted against Mr. Trump will have their heads “on a pike." The choice for Republicans has always been to pledge fealty to the President or leave; a record number of Republican elected officials have retired since Mr. Trump took office.
For Democrats, the trial is a battle against the formalization of the dictatorship to which Mr. Trump has always aspired, and it’s one they wage too late. As I have warned in these pages for years, an autocrat must be stopped early or he will rewrite the law so that he is no longer breaking it. Many officials had the job of holding Mr. Trump accountable – James Comey, Robert Mueller, the Republicans, the Democrats and Supreme Court Justice John Roberts, who sits in the trial like window dressing for the defenestration for democracy – and they have failed to act with the urgency and bravery required. The President does not want to be punished but he loves to get caught. He flaunts every crime he gets away with because it showcases the degradation of law, which ironically was furthered by his opponents’ blind faith in it."
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