Nancy

Documentation. Witnesses. Facts. Truth. That's what they're afraid of.

Wednesday, August 30, 2017

Show Your Work







One of my complaints about the #ImpeachTrump crowd is their tendency to scream into a void (I'm talking to you, Keith Olbermann). Who are they scolding? Impeachment is not a passive process. Someone has to actually do it, and in this case, that's a serious chunk of Congressional Republicans.


Very few Republicans have shown any evidence of listening to those calls, and it would take a lot of them in both houses to remove the President.



In Newsweek, Ronald Feinman took a step in at least providing some theoretical framework of a plan to impeach and convict Trump:


The centrists and moderate conservatives who are uncomfortable with Donald Trump are known as the Republican Main Street Partnership, estimated at 67 members of the House (about one out of every four Republicans) and a minimum of 4 in the Senate.
The members of this group are often called RINOS (Republicans in Name Only), and are often challenged in Republican primaries by the Club For Growth, FreedomWorks, and The Tea Party Movement. They’re frequently the target of the Alt Right movement represented by Breitbart News.
A lot of these Republican House members come from the Northeast and Midwest, as well as California and the Pacific Northwest and even a few from South Florida, belying the idea that all Republicans come primarily from the South, the Great Plains, and the Mountain West.
It would seem reasonable that at least 24 and more, likely up to half of the 67 members of this GOP group, would be susceptible to being convinced to vote to bring Donald Trump up on impeachment charges.
No one can be certain which specific members would do so, but among those who would seem likely to do so, without any guarantee of course, would be, in alphabetical order, Barbara Comstock of Virginia; Carlos Curbelo of Florida; Charlie Dent of Pennsylvania; Mario Diaz-Balart of Florida; Lynn Jenkins of Kansas; Peter King of New York; Adam Kinzinger of Illinois; Darin LaHood of Illinois; Leonard Lance of New Jersey; David Reichert of Washington; Ileana Ros-Lehtinen of Florida; Elise Stefanik of New York; Fred Upton of Michigan; Greg Walden of Oregon; and Lee Zeldin of New York.
This totals 15 members, just a dozen or so shy of the needed number, leaving only about another dozen needed to join them.
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So who in the Senate would be likely to vote to convict Donald Trump of “high crimes and misdemeanors” in office?
Alphabetically, the list might include the following: Lamar Alexander of Tennessee; Richard Burr of North Carolina; Shelley Moore Capito of West Virginia; Bill Cassidy of Louisiana; Susan Collins of Maine; Bob Corker of Tennessee; Joni Ernst of Iowa; Jeff Flake of Arizona; Cory Gardner of Colorado;   Lindsey Graham of South Carolina; Chuck Grassley of Iowa; Dean Heller of Nevada; Ron Johnson of Wisconsin; Mike Lee of Utah; John McCain of Arizona; Mitch McConnell of Kentucky (after the embarrassment his wife suffered sharing the stage with Trump last Tuesday, and Trump's constant attacks on McConnell himself);  Jerry Moran of Kansas;   Lisa Murkowski of Alaska; Rand Paul of Kentucky; Rob Portman of Ohio; Marco Rubio of Florida; Ben Sasse of Nebraska; Tim Scott of South Carolina; Dan Sullivan of Alaska; John Thune of South Dakota; Thom Tillis of North Carolina; Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania; and Todd Young of Indiana.
This is a list of 28 Republican Senators, of which just 19 are needed, and it seems like a legitimate list, when one studies these Senators and their records and utterances in the age of Trump.


He concludes:


So the idea that we cannot get rid of Donald Trump is clearly false. It is urgent that these members of the House of Representatives and Senate, of the party of Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, Dwight D. Eisenhower, and Ronald Reagan begin the process.
It’s time for them to put country above party. 


I don't believe they will put country above party; they're Republicans. I continue to think that if Trump were to be removed from office be Congress, it would only be in the aftermath of a Democratic wave in the 2018 midterms (which isn't impossible). But I agree that if someone were to start a grassroots effort to tip the Republicans in that direction, these would be the targets.


When you want to discuss the feasibility of removing Trump, this Feinman piece should be the skeleton of your roadmap.

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