Dear Friends,
Impeaching President Trump is a patriotic necessity, one that every American regardless of party should support. As Trump’s behavior becomes ever more brazen and erratic, every American needs to voice support for the impeachment process per se and do everything possible to encourage Republican lawmakers to join in removing Trump from office quickly. I say this without having any axe to grind against the President or the GOP. Unless the political class unites around the goal of removing him from office, our nation will have no future and the GOP itself will wither and die.
It’s clear from the papers that President Trump sought to coerce the Ukrainian government to come up with dirt that would harm a political opponent while helping the president’s own election chances. Some people, like Senator Rob Portman, have temporized, saying that the president’s action was unwise but not impeachable. Portman is wrong because if the President’s behavior is allowed, our entire election system will become a farce. It will become a farce simply by allowing the President to continue on this way throughout the 2020 presidential campaign. Where does his conduct leave every other candidate, Democrat or Republican, who runs for office but plays by the rules? His lawless behavior is an affront to everyone else who has legitimately won an elective post. Publicly inviting foreign governments to meddle in our affairs, as Trump has done, demonstrates a resolve to defy–rather than defend–our written and living Constitution.
Personally, I am outraged at the development of a corrupt set of transnational relations that a sitting president is hoping will lessen his dependence on American voters. The president bets that he can hold on to power by conjuring up a climate of public opinion that degrades every other public figure and undermines confidence in our once-efficacious and illustrious political system. The damage that he is inflicting on his own party, on the nation, and on blameless public servants is mounting daily. If the American public cries out loudly for impeachment, Republicans will listen.
No one but former Senator Jeff Flake has the guts to admit how many enemies Trump has within his own party. (The Arizona Republican, speaking to USA Today last month, estimated that 35 GOP senators would vote to remove Trump if the vote were private.) Think of all the honorable people Trump has dismissed and humiliated, the Tillersons and McMasters of the world. Where are they now? If I were Mitt Romney, Mitch McConnell, or Marco Rubio, I’d be working furiously behind the scenes to dump Donald Trump and expel him from the Republican Party. If the Senate GOP hangs with Trump, the senators will go down in history as the group that destroyed our nation through inactivity. If, though, they turn against Trump, the GOP will save the nation from a very bad man, and the party’s prospects will brighten again.
I am not a firebrand. Frankly, I wish this whole terrifying mess Trump is causing would go away. But he really is turning into a political Lucifer, destroying the “natural order” of the government and aspiring to a kind of power at odds with what the Constitution envisioned. This morning the Times reports his decision to spurn cooperation with the House impeachment inquiry, branding it “illegitimate” and “partisan,” whereas if he has done nothing wrong one would think he would be eager to clear his name. Congress definitely has the right to gather information prior to charging Trump with articles of impeachment, and no amount of bluster will take that right away.
Again, I entreat every patriot to get behind impeachment as loudly as possible and to urge the House and Senate to see it through. Perhaps massive pro-impeachment rallies are the way to go.
RELATED ARTICLES:
George Will, “The Spiraling President Adds Self-Impeachment To His Repertory” (10 Oct 2019)
