Category: MittRomney

Republicans can’t quit Trump and it’s tearing their party apart

Posted on by Kerry Eleveld

Senate GOP Leader Mitch McConnell's Faustian bargain with Donald Trump is backfiring in spectacular fashion as his Senate caucus descends into bitter internecine warfare over whether to back Trump's seditious effort to overturn the presidential election results.

That intra-party battle spilling into public view is how Republicans kicked off the 117th Congress. As House Democrats narrowly reelected Nancy Pelosi as Speaker Sunday, McConnell lost grip on the caucus he had marshaled nearly a year earlier to clear Trump of impeachment charges against the backdrop of a mountain of evidence Senate Republicans ultimately dismissed without hearing from a single witness. That blind fealty helped assure Trump that no matter what action he took—however reckless, illegal, or traitorous—he would never pay a price for it. And so when Trump lost the presidential election, he decided yet again that making a bid to steal it would be both perfectly in order and without consequence.

So McConnell and congressional Republicans once again stood by Trump for over a month, declaring repeatedly that he had every right to try to overturn the results of an election that was secure, fair, and devoid of fraud. The longer Trump's baseless effort continued, the more bogus it was shown to be through a series of endless losses in both state and federal courtrooms. But when states across the nation finally certified their results rendering Trump the loser, McConnell figured he could just flip the switch, reluctantly embrace the results, and leave Trump in the rearview mirror. 

Not so fast. The monster McConnell nurtured over the last four years with the help of his fellow Republicans has turned on him. Despite his repeated pleas for Senate Republicans to leave Trump for dead when Congress certifies the election results in a joint session Wednesday, the lure of personal ambition proved too powerful for the greater good of the GOP caucus. After Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri announced with the gleam of 2024 in his eyes that he would challenge the results during certification, Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas suddenly wanted a piece of the action too. Now about a dozen Senate Republicans—all hoping to ingratiate themselves with Trump's cultists to boost their own political star—have jumped on board the Trump's sedition train. As Joan McCarter notes, that pro-fascist coup faction represents a quarter of the Senate Republican caucus. 

At the other end of the spectrum, several of their GOP colleagues have spoken out forcefully against the largely symbolic, politically expedient, and certainly futile effort—which will ultimately be shot down in the Democrat-controlled House. Sen. Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania, who notably isn't running for reelection in 2022, blasted Hawley and Cruz by name in a statement for trying to undermine "the right of the people to elect their own leaders."

On Wednesday, Toomey said, "I intend to vigorously defend our form of government by opposing this effort to disenfranchise millions of voters in my state and others.”

Sen. Mitt Romney of Utah, who has regularly marched to the beat of his own drummer in the caucus, also skewered the effort as an "egregious ploy." And Sen. Ben Sasse, who is no doubt working to burnish his own brand of Republicanism, called the challenge “a very, very, bad idea,” saying he was both "concerned about the division in America" and the health of the Republican Party. "This is bad for the country and bad for the party,” said Sasse, who just secured another six-year Senate term.

Sen. Tom of Cotton of Arkansas, a GOP firebrand also eyeing 2024, turned in a somewhat unusual condemnation of the pro-Trump challenge on constitutional grounds, saying it would "only embolden those Democrats who want to erode further our system of constitutional government.” 

Even some Republicans in the House have objected to the Trumpian coup. Rep. Chip Roy of Texas, also a GOP firebrand and one-time aide to Sen. Cruz, forced his GOP colleagues Sunday to vote on whether the House delegations from the states Trump is challenging should be seated since Republicans are claiming widespread systemic fraud took place in those states.

"After all, those representatives were elected through the very same systems—with the same ballot procedures, with the same signature validations, with the same broadly applied decisions of executive and judicial branch officials—as were the electors chosen for the President of the United States under the laws of those states," Roy said of the House delegations from Arizona, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Nevada. Naturally, nearly every one of his GOP voted in favor of seating the delegations, with a vote of 371-2 permitting Pelosi to swear in all the House members from the states Trump is challenging. The two GOP members who voted against it said they simply wanted to debate the matter. 

While the whole episode on Wednesday will serve as yet another stain on the entire Republican party, it will at least have the benefit of forcing Senate Republicans to go on the record either backing a bald-faced betrayal of American democracy or risking the wrath of Trump. Neither one of those positions is particularly enviable for the cohort of vulnerable Senate Republicans in 2022. It forces those Senate Republicans to place very early bets on risking the alienation of more moderate suburban voters in order to woo Trump voters who may or may not actually continue to turn out for the Republican party once Trump isn't on the ticket. Sitting GOP senators such as John Thune of South Dakota are already facing the prospect of attracting primaries from Trump acolytes, which in turn could imperil the GOP’s path to prevailing in subsequent general election contests. 

If Senate Republicans had hung together and refused to challenge the election results during this week’s joint session, they all could have started to build a certain amount of insulation from Trumpian politics moving forward. But as it turns out, a craven party that eagerly betrayed the country to achieve its own political ends has only served to embolden its own cohort of craven politicians who are eagerly throwing their colleagues under the bus to serve their own political ends. What comes around, goes around. 

Romney makes up new ‘precedent’ to say he’ll vote on a Trump Supreme Court nominee

Posted on by Joan McCarter

Sen. Willard Mitt Romney, the Republican from Utah who broke ranks with Republicans to vote to convict Donald Trump on one of the articles of impeachment, abuse of power, has snapped back into line when it matters most: a Trump Supreme Court nominee. He says his decision isn’t based on “a subjective test of ‘fairness’ which, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder,” but on “the Constitution and precedent.” And then makes up some real bullshit on precedent: "The historical precedent of election year nominations is that the Senate generally does not confirm an opposing party’s nominee but does confirm a nominee of its own." Except for when a Democratic Senate confirmed Ronald Reagan’s nominee, Anthony Kennedy, in 1988. 

“The historical precedent of election year nominations is that the Senate generally does not confirm an opposing party’s nominee but does confirm a nominee of its own,” he says. Historical precedent set by Mitch McConnell in 2016 in order to steal a Supreme Court seat from President Barack Obama. Maybe in the future we’ll have to call it the Romney Doctrine, just to cement for history how pathetic he is. 

This means McConnell has the votes. He doesn’t know (supposedly) the nominee yet, but he’s got the votes. It’s worth noting that he’s been sitting on the HEROES Act coronavirus relief bill for four months without acting, but will try to push a Supreme Court nominee in five weeks. It means that Sen. Susan Collins now has permission from McConnell to vote against the nominee, if she thinks that will save her pathetic political skin, because he doesn’t need her vote. It will be too little, too late for Collins, but that’s what will happen. 

It's about saving the country. Simple as that. Donate now to help bring it back to the White House and Senate.

David Frum: Don’t assume McConnell has the votes to confirm

Posted on by Aldous J Pennyfarthing

Last night and this morning, I felt like crawling into a hole for the next 40 days or so. And not a deep hole. I didn’t have the energy or joie de vivre for a deep hole. It would have been a shallow hole. Barely a hole at all. Really, I would have just lay down in the dirt until my DNA fused to the worms’ and slugs’ and grasses’ much more upbeat genetic material.

But I’m a more resilient guy ever since I got into therapy and on antidepressants (I recommend both if you’re struggling). And this morning a friend sent me this Atlantic story from former George W. Bush speechwriter and confirmed NeverTrumper David Frum.

He makes some excellent points (one of them being, don't swallow your tongue in abject, pants-shitting fear just yet):

What McConnell did in 2016 was an assertion of brute power, and what he proposes in 2020 is another assertion of brute power. And so the question arises: Does McConnell in fact have the power he asserts?

The answer may be no, for four reasons.

Do tell, David Frum:

The polls do not favor Susan Collins, Cory Gardner, or Thom Tillis—senators from Maine, Colorado, and North Carolina up for reelection this cycle. Yet these competitors may not be ready to attend their own funerals. They may regard voting against McConnell's Court grab as a heaven-sent chance to prove their independence from an unpopular president—and to thereby save their own seats.

Lisa Murkowski of Alaska has also made skeptical noises, and even Lindsey Graham of South Carolina may flinch. He faces an unexpectedly tough race this year, and he is extra-emphatically on the record vowing not to support a Supreme Court confirmation vote in the later part of a presidential year.

Frum also asks if Trump can find a woman nominee (Trump almost needs to nominate a woman to replace the legendary RBG, lest his female support erode even further) at the 11th hour who will be viewed as moderate enough by the senators who could be thinking of defecting.

Any last-minute Trump nominee will face a gantlet of opposition in the Senate, a firestorm of opposition in the country, and probably a lifetime of suspicion from the majority of the country.

Can McConnell and Trump find an appointee willing to risk all that for the chance—but not the guarantee—of a Supreme Court seat? Specifically, can they find a woman willing to do it? The optics of replacing Ginsburg with a man may be too ugly even for the Trump administration. And if they can find a woman, can they find a woman sufficiently moderate-seeming to provide cover to anxious senators? The task may prove harder than immediately assumed.

In addition, Yertle the Asshole’s hypocrisy on this issue is so egregiously off the charts it might create a mutually assured destruction scenario in which Democrats (assuming Biden wins and Dems retake the Senate) feel justified in packing the court by, say, adding two more justices.

But a last-minute overreach by McConnell could seem so illegitimate to Democrats as to justify radical countermoves should they win in November: increasing the number of appellate judges and Supreme Court justices; conceivably even opening impeachment hearings against Justice Brett Kavanaugh.

McConnell may want the win badly enough to dismiss those risks. But many conservative-leaning lawyers in the country may be more cautious. And their voices will get a hearing in a contentious nomination fight—not only by the national media, but by some of the less Trump-y Republican senators. This could be enough to slow down a process that has no time to spare.

I think Frum makes some great points, and anything that will keep me from reaching for the shovel is welcome news right now.

So let’s breathe, and keep fighting on.

A Democratic Senate has never been more important. Make it so.

“This guy is a natural. Sometimes I laugh so hard I cry." — Bette Midler on Aldous J. Pennyfarthing, via Twitter. Find out what made dear Bette break up. Dear F*cking Lunatic: 101 Obscenely Rude Letters to Donald Trump and its boffo sequels Dear Pr*sident A**clown: 101 More Rude Letters to Donald Trump and Dear F*cking Moron: 101 More Letters to Donald Trump by Aldous J. Pennyfarthing are now available for a song! Click those links, yo!

The most important accomplishment of impeaching Trump was its impact on Joe Biden

Posted on by Ian Reifowitz

Impeaching The Man Who Lost The Popular Vote was incredibly important, and not only because it was the right thing to do. Yes, he committed crimes and abused the power of his office, and yes he deserved to be impeached and removed from that office—the record of every Republican Senator other than Mitt Romney will be forever stained by their votes to acquit. History will remember their cowardice.

Beyond the morality, impeachment has had a clear, long-lasting political benefit, one that will pay dividends for Vice President Joe Biden this November. Thanks to impeachment, everyone knows that the charges Trump leveled against Joe and Hunter Biden on Ukraine—the ones he tried to blackmail that country’s president into investigating, or least announcing an intention to investigate—are utter malarkey.

Trump always feared running against Biden, and he acted corruptly in a failed bid to get enough dirt to derail the former VP’s quest to win the Democratic nomination. The impeachment process shone a bright light on Trump’s actions, and on his lies about Biden, ensuring that the smear campaign ultimately backfired.

Since the end of the impeachment trial, Trump and his minions have continued to bleat on with their completely invented and thoroughly debunked stories about the Bidens. I won’t dignify them by repeating the specifics here. Recently, Iowa Republican Senator Chuck Grassley and Wisconsin Republican Senator Ron Johnson, who heads the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, have been “investigating”—i.e., trying to keep the story in the media—this bullshit.

Never mind that by falsely smearing Biden over Ukraine, Johnson and his fellow Republican senators are all but doing the work of Vladimir Putin for him, as this Associated Press article explained. 

But the stark warning that Russia is working to denigrate the Democratic presidential candidate adds to questions about the probe by Johnson’s Senate committee and whether it is mimicking, even indirectly, Russian efforts and amplifying its propaganda.

The investigation is unfolding as the country, months removed from an impeachment case that had centered on Ukraine, is dealing with a pandemic and confronting the issue of racial injustice. Yet allegations about Biden and Ukraine remain a popular topic in conservative circles, pushed by Russian media and addressed regularly by President Donald Trump and other Republicans as a potential path toward energizing his supporters.

[...] “Particularly as a public official and somebody who’s responsible for keeping the country safe, you should always be suspicious of narratives that are trying to sort of damage or target the electoral process in your country,” said former CIA officer Cindy Otis, a foreign disinformation expert and vice president of analysis at Alethea Group. “You should always be suspicious of narratives that foreign countries are pumping out.”

As Daily Kos’ Kerry Eleveld pointed out, Johnson even admitted that his so-called probe would “would certainly help Donald Trump win reelection and certainly be pretty good, I would say, evidence about not voting for Vice President Biden.” It amazing; these Republicans always manage to say the quiet part out loud, which I guess is helpful. Nevertheless, to paraphrase what Otter said to his nemesis (and professional Republican, according to the character futures provided) Gregg Marmalard in Animal House, “Gee, you’re dumb.”

YouTube Video

Then the Orange Julius Caesar himself got into the act. On August 16 he retweeted material that our own intelligence agencies had previously identified as Russian disinformation—part of its effort to directly influence the presidential election by “denigrating” Biden. As CNN put it: “By retweeting material that the US government has already labeled as propaganda -- and doing so with the 2020 Democratic National Convention kicking off on Monday -- Trump demonstrated once again that he is willing to capitalize on foreign election meddling for his own political gain.” Here’s Virginia Democratic Senator Mark Warner:

The President of the United States should never be a willing mouthpiece for Russian propaganda. https://t.co/9y6L6uMKbM

— Mark Warner (@MarkWarner) August 17, 2020

Then came the four-day marathon of lies known as the Republican National Convention. Former Florida (where else?) Attorney General Pam Bondi went before a national audience and, once again, did Putin’s bidding by lying about the Bidens and Ukraine. The truth? When Joe Biden sought the removal of Ukrainian prosecutor Viktor Shukin he did so, as Greg Sargent of the Washington Post noted, “because the prosecutor was corrupt.” Sargent added some more important facts: “This was U.S. policy, backed by international institutions. GOP senators had no problem with it in real time. As The Post’s fact-checking team puts it, Bondi’s story is ‘fiction,’ and in reality, Joe Biden ‘was thwarting corruption, not abetting it.’” Bondi told some other lies about Hunter Biden, which the WaPo fact-checking team also debunked. 

When these latter day Marmalards now issue their breathtaking press releases or repeat Russian disinformation about the Bidens and Ukraine, the media—thus far at least—has been taking them for what they are: Utter horseshit. I won’t say the media has learned their lesson, but unlike 2016, when “but her emails” was literally the most reported story of the campaign, this year everyone who isn’t directly sucking at the Trump teat is treating these debunked charges with the (lack of) seriousness they deserve. 

For that, we can thank the impeachment of Donald Trump, which exposed the lies against the Bidens for what they are. The impeachment process inoculated the media and the American public by preparing them for what Trump is now trying to pull on this matter. So thank you Nancy Pelosi, thank you Adam Schiff, thank you Val Demings, thank you Jerry Nadler, and thanks to the rest of the Democratic impeachment team. I’m sure Joe Biden is thanking you as well.

Ian Reifowitz is the author of The Tribalization of Politics: How Rush Limbaugh's Race-Baiting Rhetoric on the Obama Presidency Paved the Way for Trump (Foreword by Markos Moulitsas)

Trump must be impeached and removed for commuting Roger Stone’s sentence. Rule of law demands it

Posted on by Ian Reifowitz

It’s very simple: By commuting Roger Stone’s sentence, The Man Who Lost The Popular Vote has sent a clear signal that anyone who does something illegal on his behalf, or who has knowledge of something illegal he has done and lies about it under oath, and/or to investigators, will never be punished. This an act that fatally weakens the constitutionally mandated checks and balances through which our democracy prevents a president from achieving dictatorial power.

Investigations cannot proceed toward any sort of justice if no one is required to tell the truth. That much should be apparent to any reasonable, objective observer, no matter their party. This president has now created a shield around himself so that he can—so long as he simply maintains the loyalty of his minions—do literally anything he wants and remain free of accountability or punishment. That cannot be allowed to stand. Our system offers but one remedy.

Thus far, only a single Republican office-holder of note has spoken out about Trump’s attack on the rule of law. All other Republicans must take a stand—either for the would-be Tyrant from Trump Tower, or for American constitutional democracy. There is no in-between.

Unprecedented, historic corruption: an American president commutes the sentence of a person convicted by a jury of lying to shield that very president.

— Mitt Romney (@MittRomney) July 11, 2020

We know the reasons we will hear from those who counsel against impeachment and removal: “but the election…..” You know what? Fuck that. This is about standing up for our Constitution. And not just the Second Amendment.

For far too long, Trump and Republican leaders in Congress, and in the states, have acted in ways that are technically within their rights (does Merrick Garland ring a bell?), but which violate fundamental constitutional norms. Commuting Roger Stone, however, goes far beyond violating norms. Even Richard Nixon didn’t pull anything like this. Trump’s corrupt actions represent a blatant attempt to destroy our democracy, and the only way to stop him is for Congress to take the one power the Constitution provides to rein in such a president.

Congress must impeach and remove Donald Trump. Now.

Senate Republicans recommit themselves to Trump—no matter how much he endangers the country

Posted on by Kerry Eleveld

Sure, Donald Trump is unfit. Sure, Trump may have begged yet another country—China—to help him win reelection. Sure, Trump is emotionally damaged and intellectually addled, according to a written account by his former national security adviser John Bolton. 

But does that matter to the Senate Republicans who cosigned Trump's presidency by saving him from conviction without hearing from a single witness? Are you high? No effing way do they have the integrity required for a little self-examination, according to CNN reporting. They're in the tank for Trump—always have been, always will be, no matter what.

Wanna give Senate Republicans the boot? Give $2 right now to say “Bye Felicia” this November.

Asked whether Senate Republicans should have sought to secure Bolton's testimony now that his book is out, the ever-reflective Sen. Ron Johnson responded, "No," adding, "We never should have had an impeachment trial."

Of course, that's not what Bolton said. Based on Trump's persistent pattern of placing his own personal and electoral needs over duty to the country, Bolton said Trump should have been investigated and impeached for more, not less. Trump engaged in "obstruction of justice as a way of life," as Bolton said, referring to his interventions in criminal investigations for personal favors.

Still, Sen. Cory Gardner of Colorado, who's likely one of the top two most-endangered GOP senators seeking reelection, had the nerve to speak up and blame House Democrats for not taking Bolton to court over this unwillingness to testify. "The House didn't think it was important," Sen. Gardner quipped. What a weasel. Bolton, who's no hero, did publicly express his willingness to testify in front of the GOP-led Senate—the Republican caucus just refused to hear from him, or any other witnesses for that matter.

The sole Republican senator to express regret about not hearing from Bolton also voted in favor of having witnesses at the trial. “I wish we had a trial with the people testifying under oath,” Sen. Mitt Romney of Utah told reporters.

But most Republicans did the only logical thing one could do in the face of a 500-page manuscript documenting the myriad ways in which Trump is selling out and endangering the country: They refused to comment. 

Sen. John Barrasso of Wyoming, however, really went the extra mile, affirming that he's more convinced than ever that Trump's the right guy for the job despite begging China to buy more agricultural products in order to secure his reelection. "Different people use different sales techniques," Barrasso offered. Whether they’re legal or not apparently isn’t relevant. "Every president has, one way or another, thought they ought to be reelected. I think President Trump should be reelected. I support his reelection, I'm for it."

Do Republicans even know the Constitution exists? They are  proving themselves more useless by the day, and have no business stewarding the country.

A few Republicans furrow their brows over Trump’s inspectors general purge

Posted on by Laura Clawson

Donald Trump’s firing of two inspectors general and public attack on a third, amid reports that he plans a broader purge of inspectors general, is drawing bipartisan concern—for now, anyway. 

Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley is working on a letter asking Trump to explain his firing of Michael Atkinson, the intelligence community IG who referred the Ukraine call whistleblower’s report to Congress, helping to trigger Trump’s impeachment. Of course, that right there is the explanation for Trump’s firing of Atkinson, so asking for information is kind of performative. Sens. Mitt Romney and Susan Collins are backing Grassley’s letter—but we know that only one of those three people has any possibility of actually standing up to Trump rather than plastering on a furrowed brow and folding.

“It is our responsibility to confirm that there are clear, substantial reasons for removal,” a draft of Grassley’s letter viewed by The Washington Post says. Which there are! They’re just totally corrupt reasons. And since every Senate Republican but one has let Trump know that they will never put any teeth in their concerns about him, he can safely ignore this like he has every other attempt at congressional oversight.

Trump also fired the acting inspector general for the Pentagon just before he was to take a position heading the panel conducting oversight of the $2 trillion coronavirus stimulus. You know, the one where Trump claimed “I’ll be the oversight” amid concerns that he would use the money as a slush fund to reward allies.

Additionally, he publicly attacked Christi Grimm, the Health and Human Services inspector general who issued a coronavirus response report that didn’t make the Trump administration look great.

Democrats are drafting bills to strengthen oversight of coronavirus stimulus funds and to protect inspectors general from firing without “evidence-based good cause,” in addition to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s formation of a select committee to look into the Trump administration’s handling of the pandemic by issuing subpoenas that will be ignored.

Donald Trump is a corrupt and lawless president and he intends to use this crisis to free himself further from accountability and oversight.

Romney made history. He also changed the news cycle and the anti-GOP ads to come in 2020

Posted on by Kerry Eleveld

Donald Trump woke up on Wednesday morning believing Senate Republicans would provide him a unanimous acquittal vote on impeachment. Weeks earlier, White House ally Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina had even promised the vote would be bipartisan, drawing some Democrats over to Trump's side.

But that wasn't to be. Instead, the White House—completely blindsided by Sen. Mitt Romney's declaration—abruptly blocked reporter access to Trump's meeting with Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaidó that the press corps had originally been invited to attend.

In an instant, Romney's vote to convict changed the entire trajectory of how the history books would be written, the headlines that would flow from acquittal in the days that followed, and the way ads would be written in the 2020 cycle as the general election heats up. Instead of impeachment being an entirely partisan affair—a Democrat-driven witch hunt, as Trump likes to call it—Romney affixed a permanent asterisk to Trump's acquittal, making him the only president in history to draw bipartisan support for his conviction. 

Just below the Washington Post's giant "Trump Acquitted" banner topping its site Wednesday night, Romney's vote of conviction attracted no less than four headlines that wouldn't have otherwise been there. One read, "No senator ever voted to remove a president of his party from office. Until Mitt Romney."

But Romney didn't just change the story and the way the story would be told, he also changed how that story would reverberate through the 2020 election cycle. Trump, who will target Romney incessantly between now and November, will deprive himself of the talking point that it was Democrats and Democrats alone who took issue with his so-called "perfect call" and voted to convict. In addition, Democrats' discipline as a caucus which included some brave votes from Sens. Doug Jones of Alabama and Joe Manchin of West Virginia robbed Trump of declaring his acquittal was a bipartisan consensus.

Romney's Senate floor speech also included some attack-ad friendly phrases like "appalling abuse of public trust" and "flagrant assault on our electoral rights, our national security, and our fundamental values." Those damning assessments will surely make their way into some ads aimed at unseating Romney's vulnerable GOP colleagues.

Romney may only be one person, but on Wednesday he provided an unexpected and much-needed crack of light in an otherwise very dark episode in the nation's history. Perhaps it was the beginning of a reckoning for the GOP.

Trump will emerge at noon to see his shadow, forecast one more year of fascism

Posted on by Mark Sumner

At noon on Thursday, Donald Trump will sally forth to gloat. Or whine. To gloatwhine about his less than perfect acquittal in the Senate. Robbed of his ability to declare total victory by Sen. Mitt Romney unexpectedly casting a safety line back to the world where Republicans existed as something more than Trump’s eager footstool, the vote in the Senate has not gotten the 10,000 or so tweets it surely deserves. Tweets about “exoneration” and Rep. Adam Schiff’s collar size.

Still, Trump will not be denied his opportunity to stand before the nation and complain about a bipartisan vote of “guilty.” So he comes forth at noon to check his shadow, complain that the do-nothings done something, and talk about the real national tragedy—how eight sheets of number two copy paper meet an untimely death at the hands of Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi.

Going into the vote on Wednesday, Trump was confident that all the Republicans would grovel on cue. In fact, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell was shaping his beak into an “is that lettuce?” grin over the idea that Democrats facing difficult elections in red states might also pile in. They fully expected to exit the day with both a bipartisan vote to acquit, and a nice claim that the vote to remove Trump was “completely partisan.”

But as the day wore on, those Senate Democrats in the tightest of tight spots, like Alabama’s Doug Jones and West Virginia’s Joe Manchin, made it known that they would be voting to impeach. Neither they, nor Arizona’s Kyrsten Sinema, were even going to toss Trump a crumb by splitting their votes. All three joined every other Democrat to vote Trump guilty as charged, and unworthy to remain in office, on both articles of impeachment.

That was good, but Romney’s speech announcing that he would cast his vote against Trump was even better. It not only completely rewrote the narrative, it was a sharp rebuke of the fawning attitude adopted by every other Republican senator. It’s extraordinarily telling that for the whole course of the impeachment trial, only a handful of Republicans were ever even considered to be willing to vote for something as obvious as calling witnesses. “Serious” Republicans, including those who had been in the Senate for decades and cast votes against Bill Clinton while expressing their deep offense at his action, were never even considered as possible votes against Trump. Of course they would bow. All Republicans bow.

What Romney said in his speech—as surprising for its genuine uplifting and moving quality, as much as for the news of that single vote—flipped the script in Washington. It wrecked Trump’s plans for celebrations and caused infinitely more paper to be shredded on Capitol Hill than Pelosi did during Trump’s House chamber rally. It took a full day of pouting and screaming for Trump to settle down, and for Stephen Miller to pencil in “and Mitt Romney” to every insipid attack. 

Still, don’t expect Trump to be contrite, and certainly not restrained. As Wednesday night’s bizarre attack on New York residents demonstrated, there is no slight he will overlook, no act of vengeance too petty. Don’t be at all surprised if Trump devotes 90% of his speech to ideas that “Nancy Pelosi should be impeached.” After all, it’s certain that 100% will be about how he is perfect, Democrats are unworthy, and real Americans wear red hats.

Given that, Romney aside, the clear message of the Senate vote was that Republicans will support Trump in any action that he takes against political opponents, no matter how vile, dangerous, or illegal … it’s likely that he’ll take this opportunity to announce something even more vile, more blatant, and more divisive than before. 

Romney delivers scathing rebuke of Senate GOP’s fecklessness, calling Trump’s abuses ‘appalling’

Posted on by Kerry Eleveld

Utah Sen. Mitt Romney pledged Wednesday to do what no other GOP senator would: take a vote of conscience to convict Donald Trump of impeachable offenses. Romney's vote seals Trump's fate in the annals of history as the only president to ever draw bipartisan support for removal of office.

But Romney’s declaration from the Senate floor was much more than just a recitation of what he planned to do, it was an unmistakable rebuke of all his Republican colleagues who had abandoned their responsibilities as public servants for the comforts of the GOP's herd mentality. "Were I to ignore the evidence what has been presented and disregard what I believe my oath and the Constitution demands of me for the sake of a partisan end, it would, I fear, expose my character to history's rebuke and the censure of my own conscience," Romney said from the Senate floor. Wow.

In explaining his vote, Romney filleted the arguments of Trump's defense team, namely that Trump couldn't be impeached without having committed a crime, that Biden's conduct warranted Trump's actions, and that the ultimate decision should be left up to the voters. In response, Romney said it "defies reason" to believe that a president can only be removed from office for criminal behavior. As for Joe and Hunter Biden, he concluded there was no evidence of criminal conduct on their part and therefore no justification whatsoever for Trump's call to investigate. "There's no question in my mind that were their names not Biden, the president would never have done what he did," Romney noted. Finally, he explained that the framers had charged the Senate with the power to remove a president precisely so the partisan sentiments of voters wouldn't dictate a president's fate. 

After ticking through a list of Trump's actions, Romney concluded, "The president is guilty of an appalling abuse of public trust. What he did was not perfect. No, it was a flagrant assault on our electoral rights, our national security, and our fundamental values."

Romney added that "corrupting an election" in order to stay in office was "perhaps the most abusive and destructive violation of one's oath of office that I can imagine."

In short, Romney held up a mirror for the Republican caucus so they could see what a trash heap it had become. In speaking his conscience, he also provided Senate Democrats with a wealth of material for defeating vulnerable Senate Republicans in the upcoming election. Prior to giving his remarks, Romney told the New York Times, “I think the case was made.” He isn't the first GOP senator to agree that Trump did what he’s accused of doing, he's just the first to actually uphold his oath of office. Kudos to him.

Wanna restore responsible leadership to the Senate? Give $2 right now to make that vision a reality in November.

Here’s some excerpts of Romney’s speech. 

ROMNEY: "Were I to ignore the evidence that has been presented & disregard what I believe my oath & the constitution demands of me for the sake of a partisan end, it would, I fear, expose my character to history's rebuke & the censor of my own conscience." pic.twitter.com/psdRhPTbWr

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) February 5, 2020