On last Sunday’s The Circus (Showtime) Steve Bannon said something that hadn’t occurred to me until then. He predicted with certainty that the Democrats would impeach Trump (that had occurred to me) but also that Mitch McConnell would, at that point, offer him what Bannon called “an acquittal deal”. Mr. Bannon is, as he is accustomed to be, interesting and wrong.
His mistake is to ignore two immutable laws of American politics. First: Trump can never be trusted to uphold his end of any deal and everyone, even McConnell, knows that. Second: only Republicans impeach, they only impeach Democrats, and they always fall short of the votes to remove.
But what about Nixon? you say. Nixon demonstrates how the process works when the shoe is on the other foot, as in the present case. In this situation the Democrats deliberate impeachment and produce articles which are voted out of committee and the Republicans response is to shove their president out the door.
I can’t say I’ve examined even the outlines of Republican thinking on the matter. Who can really know such mysteries? Even Bannon, I’ll admit, likely has a better grasp than I. But I am holding to the immutable laws above. Sure, times change, political parties evolve, even flip polarities. In my bones, however, I feel it is late in history for the creation of entirely new patterns in the constitutional landscape.
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