Yesterday’s post, “Yes, America Is Descending Into Totalitarianism,” elicited a thoughtful response from Chris Crawford. I will publish his reply in two parts.
As always, I agree entirely with your pessimistic assessment of the state of the country. And your suggestion that Mr. Trump will start down the path to fascism by pursuing revenge against those who cross him is right on the mark; I came to the same conclusion a few days ago. I can contribute two ideas to the discussion, the first heartening and the second disheartening.
On the sunny side, we have a strong likelihood that the Republican Congress will impeach and convict Mr. Trump. I realize that this sounds absurd, but here is my reasoning:
1. The Republican Party was dead-set against Mr. Trump throughout the primaries, because they recognized just how destructive he could be. Now they all claim to support him, but how sincere do you think that those proclamations are? My guess is that the average Republican is willing to give Mr. Trump the opportunity to demonstrate some statesmanship, but expects Mr. Trump to fail horribly — at which point the Republicans will impeach him. I suspect that many Republican Congresscritters have already discussed this possibility among themselves.
2. The Republicans need to protect their brand. If Mr. Trump triggers a sequence of scandals — say, grabbing Ms. Merkel by the pussy — the Republican brand will be so discredited that it will lose elections for a generation. In the Republican view, Mr. Trump will surely be gone in four years, and they’ll need to be able to continue to function as a party. They may well conclude that dumping Mr. Trump is the only way.
3. There is also the very real possibility that Mr. Trump intends to replace the Republican Party with The Gold-Coated Donald J. Trump Party. Why else would he be conducting a victory tour of the country, going to his most enthusiastic supporters? He already won the election! What’s the point of further campaigning? And note that he continues to spew Tweets to his followers. Is this merely a continuation of an old habit or does he intend to develop this new channel so that he can bypass the Republican Party in four years? Indeed, during the primaries he threatened to run as an independent if he lost the primaries. When the Republicans realize that Mr. Trump is a direct threat to their existence, they’ll surely dump him.
4. Here’s my weakest argument: the Republicans decide that Mr. Trump is harming the country as a whole and conclude that, for the good of the Republic, they must impeach Mr. Trump. Yeah, I know, it sounds absurd, doesn’t it?
Moreover, from the Republican point of view, impeaching and convicting Mr. Trump will put Mr. Pence into the Oval Office, and while they may find him too far to the right, he’s still a regular Republican politician and won’t go around grabbing women by the pussy.
I’ll post his bad news tomorrow.
I think Mr. Trump will be impeached sooner than later. #1 He has lied continuously to the American people and, if he is allowed to continue, the poor, the old, and the minorities will be deserted causing mass confusion everywhere. #2 TrumpCare will never make it through the senate. # 3 Comey and anybody with a half a brain knows Trump ordered the collusion with the Russians and it was because of this collusion that he stole the presidency. #4 Mike Pence continues to distance himself from the Trump White House proving he wants to be President. #5 when it comes out that Trump cheated, the dilemma is to whether Hillary should be offered the presidency, which is now under negotiation. #6 The Republicans are waiting until Neil Gorsuch is verified before starting impeachment. #7 Trump is nearing nuclear war with North Korea and the congress will not let this happen. These are grounds for impeachment.
thanks for the comments.
The last paragraph from an article by Frum (a tweet you posted May, 2019::
“Perhaps the Trump administration hopes that it can run out the clock on the bank subpoenas and the other matters, too. But so many clocks are ticking over so many inquiries into so many areas of potential scandal. Can they all be postponed and postponed past 2020? For a president with many guilty secrets, everything turns on the ability to insert delay after delay before ultimate legal defeat. It’s not a great plan. It’s liable to go wrong, maybe catastrophically wrong. At this point, though, it’s all he’s got.”
In 2019, it looks as if Trump can ride out his first term, because he will be less valuable as a martyr to his detractors. The best– but fantastic– outcome would have been if he had been forced to resign in 2017. No such luck.
The simpler Lewinsky scandal took a year to result in Clinton’s impeachment. If it were to, optimistically take a year from today (which would be May 2020) to impeach Trump, it might not result in his removal by the senate. And the presidential conventions would be a couple of months away.
Our one big hope is that Trump damages the reputation of the GOP so badly, they wont ever run another candidate like him. A quite plausible scenario as the dirt is dished out more ‘n more. Trump practically revels in it; though he resents the intrusion, he wants people to think of him as a macho man.
What happens to him and his dynasty does of course matter to Trump– but he is not loyal to the GOP.