After months of using an inevitable impeachment trial as a pass to dodge questions about President Trump’s Ukraine behavior, the pending acquittal vote has GOP senators laying out their reasons for clearing Trump for the conduct. It’s not expected that any Republicans will join Democrats in voting to remove the President, which requires a 67-vote threshold.
This has been a low point in the Senate’s history. It has shown itself to be vestigial, antiquated, and over-dedicated to the protection of the interests of white owners of capital. In short, an old whore gone in the teeth.
I don’t know which flavor of these bullshit excuses is more disgusting. The hypocrisy of nattering about what level of misconduct is required to rise to a convictable level would make the younger Lindsey Graham spin in his grave. But the bit about not convicting because the House was partisan exhumes Rule of Law’s corpse for the express purpose of spitting on it.
Sen. Pat Roberts (R-KS) main frustration was with the tenure of impeachment managers, whose arguments were “incorrect and demanding,” he said during his speech on the floor Tuesday. “I am troubled that countless times the House managers made senators feel as if we were the ones on trial … constantly stating that senators had no choice but to agree with their line of reasoning, and if we did not, then we would deal with the consequences. A veiled threat yet to be defined.”
23 years a US Senator, prior to that 16 years a state legislator, and he still doesn’t get that every issue he votes on has consequences? And isn’t the old fuck retiring?, or is that Jerry Moran?
Well, it’s a fact that no Senator has ever voted against their party in an impeachment trial. I guess it’s also a fact that no President has ever been this guilty before. It does say as much about the impeachment process as it does about Senate Republicans that even this much evidence of this many crimes won’t get a President removed. Perhaps we need yet another check in the Constitution.
Edit: I meant to say no Senator ever voted against their party’s President. I realize that several Democratic Senators voted to acquit Johnson and a few Republicans to acquit Clinton.
What the Senate wants, even more than an acquittal of Trump, is that it will continue to be seen as a separate branch of the United States Government.
Which it is now NOT.
It is not so much a question of Dems “hammering it home” in their public utterances. It is a question of the the Trump Capture of the Senate being seen by nearly all Americans as un-American and deeply wrong.
If that is not the case, that is a malpractice by ALL of this society’s established institutions and their leaders.
Education
Fourth Estate
Commerce
Legal System
All of these institutions have leaders. And they need to make themselves heard. America’s working people are not institutional leaders but they have got to have guidance and direction. What the GOP is doing is deeply wrong.
Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) said on the floor that, “the House’s abuse of power article rests on objectively legal conduct,” and that, “until Congress legislates otherwise, a president is within his authority to request that a foreign leader assist with anti corruption efforts.”
Wasn’t there, during the 2016 campaign circuit, a big deal about ‘law and order’ something, something…?
But anyway, I sure do hope they start investigating how politician’s sons capitalize on their daddy’s name to be puppets on the boards of global conglomerates. I can see it’s important to them.
Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-OK) argued, “There was nothing wrong with President Trump’s phone call with President Zelensky” while claiming the House’s evidence was “hearsay” and lacked a “direct witness.” “The transcript speaks for itself. No evidence of a quid pro quo, of any wrongdoing whatsoever,” he said.