On impeachment, the stakes are high not only for Trump but also for almost everybody else
The consequences of the Senate impeachment trial that opens Tuesday could be considerable for former President Donald Trump.
And for almost everybody else.
For Trump, accustomed to earning the word “unprecedented” while he was in office over the past four years, will do it again out of office – the first president to be impeached twice, and the first to face that historic rebuke even after he had moved out of the White House. That’s not the sort of distinction presidents typically aspire to have.
But the stakes have the potential to be even higher for others, especially for the Republican Party. In the wake of the Jan. 6 assault on the Capitol – the insurrection that triggered these impeachment proceedings – a GOP civil war has been ignited over the party’s direction and its tolerance for fringe conspiracy theorists.
How Trump’s two impeachment trials compare
Conviction requires a two-thirds majority – all 50 Democrats, say, plus 17 Republicans. In an earlier vote, 45 of the 50 Senate Republicans endorsed Trump’s defense, saying a president can’t be impeached once out of office. (Constitutional scholars are divided on the question, though most cite precedents that indicate a former president can be impeached.)
For those senators, that process argument makes irrelevant any substantive debate over what the former president actually did.
For Trump, his second impeachment trial is more likely to reinforce opinions of him than change them. His loyalists are citing it as evidence bolstering his complaints that he has been a victim of unyielding partisan attacks since his inauguration in 2017. He presumably will argue that acquittal is vindication, as he did after his first impeachment trial.
USA TODAY/Suffolk Poll: Americans see democracy damaged after Trump
“The assessment of Trump’s presidency is already in and really unlikely to change, and that is: his presidency was a failure,” said Jeffrey Engel, founding director of the Center for Presidential History at Southern Methodist University and co-author of a book about impeachment. “The only interesting question historians are going to debate in years to come is, do we put him above or below Buchanan, or do we create a separate category?”
James Buchanan, a Democrat elected as the nation’s 15th president in 1856, is consistently ranked by scholars as the worst, or one of the worst, presidents in history for failing to address the issue of slavery or avert the secession of Southern states.
“Buchanan is generally considered the lowest because he didn’t do anything to stop the Civil War,” Engel said in an interview. “Trump is in the unique category of being a president who deliberately attacked the Constitution he swore to defend.”
For Republicans, what comes next?
Republicans who were looking forward to a post-Trump era, one with less conflict and chaos, will have to wait.
The two congresswomen epitomize the roiling debate over what direction the Republican Party should take. On Thursday, 61 House Republicans voted to oust Cheney from her leadership post because she voted to impeach Trump. Only 11 House Republicans voted to strip Greene of her committee assignments to rebuke her for extremist remarks she has made in the past embracing QAnon, anti-Semitism, and violence against Democratic officials.Greene repudiated some of the controversial comments she had made in the past, including her false denials that the 9/11 attack on the Pentagon or the Parkland school shooting had actually happened.
At issue for the GOP are its electoral prospects ahead and even the possibility, being discussed by some, that disenchanted Republicans will split off to form a third party.
During Trump’s tenure, Republicans lost control of the House, then the White House, and now the Senate. While he commands the loyalty of an unshaken core of supporters, dismay about his provocative rhetoric and erratic leadership have cost his party the allegiance of millions of moderate and establishment Republicans.
“The whole Trump era has been quite bad for Republicans,” Charlie Dent, a seven-term Republican congressman from Pennsylvania who retired in 2018, said in an interview. “People talk about the base being so devoted to Donald Trump, but it seems to be a diminished base. You go to the suburbs and see nothing but disaster for the Republican Party.”
Based on his private conversations with GOP officials, Dent said that if the impeachment vote were secret, 80 or 90 senators would vote to convict Trump, a number that would include a majority of Republicans.
But of course the vote isn’t secret. The fact that almost all Senate Republicans are expected to stick with Trump, whatever their private views, is evidence of his continued clout.
For Biden, can bipartisanship survive?
Biden has done his best to simply ignore his predecessor’s impeachment.
