Given that we’re less than 10 months out from the Nov. 3, 2020, presidential election, it is reasonable and legitimate to conclude that:
a) what President Trump did vis-a-vis Ukraine was wrong and perhaps even impeachable. However,
(b) because of the proximity to the election, he should not be convicted by the Senate and removed from office. Instead,
(c) the voters should decide Trump’s fate at the ballot box.
If Republicans were making that argument, there would be little to quarrel with.
Unfortunately, too many Republicans have insisted that Trump did nothing wrong: that he is the victim of a political witch-hunt and an ongoing political vendetta by angry Democrats who have never reconciled themselves to his election as president.
Trump himself, moreover, has never acknowledged any wrongdoing. To the contrary: he continues to insist that his phone call to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky was a “perfect conversation” and “totally appropriate.”
This is patently false and a complete denial of reality. In truth, as we now know beyond the shadow of a doubt, Trump abused his authority as president to try and secure personal political favors from a foreign government, and he tried to use Congressionally authorized aid to that government as leverage to secure these favors.
This is the very definition of an abuse of power and a violation of the public trust.
Now, whether this rises to the level of an impeachable offense is legitimately debatable. And whether the Senate should convict Trump for this offense and remove him from office is even more debatable. But there can be no debate about the underlying offense and wrongdoing by the president.
The facts don’t lie, but political partisans often do. And too many Republicans, in Congress and the media, are lying and spinning about what Trump did, why he was impeached, and why he is now being tried in the Senate.
In so doing, they are contributing mightily to a debilitating national cynicism that ascribes all political disputes to a raw lust for power and revenge.
To the cynics, and to the wild-eyed partisans, there can be no principled, good-faith disagreements, just high-pitched, life-and-death political struggles in which anything goes. Just win, baby. Truth, after all, is relative.
This, of course, does not serve our country and our politics well. It results in a hardening of the partisan arteries, political arteriosclerosis, and legislative paralysis. Nothing gets done because the two sides refuse even to communicate honestly, fight fairly, and legislate respectfully.
For Republicans eager to secure the border, check the regulatory state, reform entitlements, rebuild the military, and liberalize healthcare, this is an ominous and foreboding development.
Worse still, by failing to speak honestly and forthrightly about Trump’s wrongdoing, Republican officeholders are handicapping themselves when the next Democratic President abuses her power and authority to, say, ban and confiscate guns, grant amnesty and citizenship rights to illegal immigrants, limit options and choices in the health insurance marketplace, force local schools to accommodate transgender identity and “inclusion,” and make college “free.”
What standing, after all, will Republican congressman and senators have to oppose these naked power grabs after they spent the better part of a year rationalizing and excusing Trump’s abuse of power?
A republic if you can keep it, warned Benjamin Franklin. Let’s at least try to keep it by honestly calling out wrongdoing no matter where it occurs, and regardless of which side of the political aisle it originates. That may not mean convicting Trump and removing him from office; but it surely means leveling with the American people about his abuse of power and wrongdoing.
Note: Tim Carney and Quin Hillyer at the Washington Examiner, and the editors at National Review, share similar thoughts about the Senate Republicans vis-a-vis the Trump impeachment.
Feature photo/illustration credit: QuotesGram via Tunnel Wall.