Signs Republicans are Dumping Trump [View all]

[MikeJelf]

If it's true that Republicans are shuffling toward the lifeboats, preparing to abandon Good Ship Trump before its sinking pulls them down in the undertow (a phenomenon we saw in 1974 with Nixon), one of the clearest signs may have appeared in an oligarch-owned organ Nov. 4:
An opinion piece by a lawyer who worked on the Clinton impeachment for Kenneth Starr held that prior impeachments resulted from coverups rather than actual crimes, but that the Trump case centers on the actual crime of extortion and shaking down a foreign victim for something of value to a political campaign, a clear campaign law violation. (To be fair, calling it extortion, which it so clearly is, was my idea.)
Of course the premise cited by Paul Rosenzweig in the Los Angeles Times is at best questionable:
The Clinton impeachment may have been baseless without the coverup, but Nixon's Administration did tons of crime aside from the Watergate burglary, which was simply the loose thread which, when pulled, unraveled all else.
Whether there's evidence Nixon specifically knew about the Watergate job beforehand is irrelevant, as impeachment is not an ordinary criminal proceeding, but a constitutional one.
When a president has ordered subordinates to violate the law even in a general way, that is a constitutional "high crime" and grounds for removal from office, with or without the executive's foreknowledge of a specific violation of criminal law.
That's also why Trump partisans' throwing up of dust about the safeguards afforded defendants in criminal trials is such an insult to anyone who hears it.
Getting insulted is something that's hard to avoid when you're on the same planet as Trump, and the quality of the lying has deteriorated vastly since the days of Tricky Dicky.
Earlier impeachments likewise were founded on deeds rather than the hiding of them.
Andrew Johnson's impeachment followed his failure to enact the radical Republicans' reconstruction policies to their satisfaction, which he hardly hid.
And the impeachment which inspired the Constitution's framers, that of Lord Latimer in 1376, was based on, among other things, taking something of value from a foreign adversary in a "quid pro quo" against the national interest.
When Edward III pardoned Latimer a few months later, he inspired the Framers to specify that our presidential power of the pardon does not extend to impeachment.