Max Boot weighs in on his former party.
The GOP doesn’t deserve to survive this debacle
By Max Boot
Columnist
Feb. 1, 2020 at 12:58 p.m. EST
I was recently asked if I would ever rejoin the Republican Party after having registered as an independent the day after President Trump’s election in 2016. The answer is an emphatic no. Trump will leave office some day (I hope!), but he will leave behind a quasi-authoritarian party that is as corrupt as he is. The failure to call witnesses in Trump’s impeachment trial revealed the GOP’s moral failure.
Last Sunday, the New York Times reported that, in his forthcoming book, former national security adviser John Bolton writes that Trump told him in August he wanted to freeze military aid to Ukraine “until officials there helped with investigations into Democrats including the Bidens.” For one brief moment it appeared that this blockbuster revelation would shatter the Republican wall of complicity. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R.-Ky.) even said on Tuesday that he didn’t have the votes to stop witnesses from testifying. By Friday, he had the votes; the motion to call witnesses failed, 51-49, with only two Republicans (Mitt Romney and Susan Collins) voting “aye.”
Senate set to acquit Trump next week after bid for witnesses is defeated
The most significant of the “nay” votes was Lamar Alexander (Tenn.), a 79-year-old political warhorse who is retiring this year. He admitted what the most purblind Trump partisans will not: that “it was inappropriate for the president to ask a foreign leader to investigate his political opponent.” The reason he did not need to hear any witnesses, Alexander explained, was because “there is no need for more evidence to prove something that has already been proven.” So far, so good. But then he pivoted to argue that for some reason Trump’s misconduct doesn’t meet the “high bar for an impeachable offense.” He concluded that the verdict on Trump should be left to “the presidential election” — you know, the election Trump just tried to fix.Alexander’s statement raises more questions than it answers: If Trump’s attempt to blackmail Ukraine into helping him politically does not rise to the level of impeachable conduct, what does? Does Alexander subscribe to Alan Dershowitz’s doctrine of presidential infallibility? And, even if he doesn’t want to keep Trump off the ballot, why doesn’t he advocate Trump’s censure or political defeat? But instead of advocating any punishment for Trump’s “inappropriate” conduct, Alexander wants him rewarded by being reelected.
[....]
Tim Alberta of Politico makes a convincing case that even retiring lawmakers fear breaking with the president would hurt their future “earning power” and subject them to unwelcome “harassment” from Trump cultists. These concerns are understandable but should not be dispositive. Senators who shirk their constitutional duties are cowards who disgrace their oaths of office and betray the Constitution. Our troops risk their lives for this country; these senators won’t even risk some unpleasantness.
I want nothing to do with a party led by the deluded and the dishonest. I fervently hope our democracy survives this debacle. I fervently hope the Republican Party does not.
continues at washingtonpost.com |
