I don't agree with the Republican argument about impeachment becoming too common. Despite Trump fans screeching about how "every President has done something like this!", in reality I have not heard of one
single action by any President which is similar, except of course Watergate. Furthermore, impeachment is in any case very
difficult, which is enough of a structural preventative that we don't need to worry about precedent that much.
I also think that the idea that Trump honestly cared about corruption is absurd. Pretty much everyone I talked to who thinks there was some corruption involving Hunter Biden's job:
- did not look at Hunter Biden's resume or consider that even minor US government experience actually looks really good for government jobs in allied poor countries
- refuses to read the media reports which analyzed this particular incident and found no evidence of wrongdoing (poisoned-well types)
- has completely ignored the political context in Ukraine regarding the election of Zelensky
Basically the only way you could possibly believe that Joe Biden influenced Hunter's job application at Burisma at this point is if you somehow care a lot about corruption in Ukraine but also refuse to actually learn anything about corruption in Ukraine, that is, you are a finger-in-ear la-la-la-I-can't-hear-you type. There's no reason for me to make an argument for this; the evidence is all freely accessible, and the only pigeons left are the ones who refuse to read it.
Fortunately, however, several Republican Senators are not finger-in-ear toddlers, but instead teleological-suspension-of-the-ethical Kierkegaardians. This position, sadly, is completely defensible and possibly even correct. For example, the wildly conservative
Marco Rubio, who has supported Trump from day one, admits that Trump tried to manipulate the election and that it was impeachable:
Marco Rubio's widely mocked justification for acquitting Donald Trump, which conspicuously avoided condemning or approving the president's conduct, was not...
reason.com
"Just because actions meet a standard of impeachment does not mean it is in the best interest of the country to remove a President from office," Rubio said.
The shithead from my home state is technically correct, the most nauseating kind of correct. Murkowski and Collins gave some version of this argument as well. I wouldn't be surprised to find that many Republicans secretly fear a Pence Presidency. That's not surprising, given that some of Pence's friends think he's the reincarnation of Constantine I:
Those involved in what’s become a major component of the evangelical right in the United States call themselves “dominionists.” They follow “dominion
www.counterpunch.org
And, as the just-published book, The Shadow President: The Truth About Mike Pence, by award-winning journalists and authors Michael D’Antonio and Peter Eisner, states: “For most of his life Pence had believed he was guided by God’s plan. He believed that the Lord intended for him to halt the erosion of religious conviction in the United States. And though he avoided stating it himself, many of his evangelical friends believed Pence’s ultimate purpose was to establish a government based on biblical law. That was what they called Christian Dominionism.”
Fueling this hypothesis is the rabid opposition of Rand Paul to impeachment. Rand Paul's moves in this arena (including vilifying the likely irrelevant Eric Ciaramella) have been absolutely disgusting, but I have to admit that he's close to the administration and he probably knows more about Mike Pence than do any of the other anti-war Senators.
So I guess I won't lose any sleep under this manifestly unjust political outcome, given that, at least,
reality has been preserved in the Senate, and
a bipartisan majority (if we count Rubio, Murkowski, Romney and Collins) admits that Trump abused his power and violated his duties as President.
Fascism begins when the real world is shut out, and it still has its toe in the door. That
is good news.
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