They’re simmering over there
This morning I phoned my old friend, a Republican former member of Congress.
Me: So what’s up? Is Corker alone, or are others also ready to call it quits with Trump?
He: All I know is they’re simmering over there.
Me: Flake and McCain have come pretty close.
He: Yeah. Others are thinking about doing what Bob did. Sounding the alarm. They think Trump’s nuts. Unfit. Dangerous.
Me: Well, they already knew that, didn’t they?
He: But now it’s personal. It started with the Sessions stuff. Jeff was as loyal as they come. Trump’s crapping on him was like kicking your puppy. And then, you know, him beating up on Mitch for the Obamacare fiasco. And going after Flake and the others.
Me: So they’re pissed off?
He: Not just that. I mean, they have thick hides. The personal stuff got them to notice all the other things. The wild stuff, like those threats to North Korea. Tillerson would leave tomorrow if he wasn’t so worried Trump would go nuclear, literally.
Me: You think Trump is really thinking nuclear war?
He: Who knows what’s in his head? But I can tell you this. He’s not listening to anyone. Not a soul. He’s got the nuclear codes and, well, it scares the hell out of me. It’s starting to scare all of them. That’s really why Bob spoke up.
Me: So what could they do? I mean, even if the whole Republican leadership was willing to say publicly he’s unfit to serve, what then?
He: Bingo! The emperor has no clothes. It’s a signal to everyone they can bail. Have to bail to save their skins. I mean, Trump could be the end of the whole goddam Republican party.
Me: If he starts a nuclear war, that could be the end of everything.
He: Yeah, right. So when they start bailing on him, the stage is set.
Me: For what?
He: Impeachment. 25th amendment.
Me: You think Republicans would go that far?
He: Not yet. Here’s the thing. They really want to get this tax bill through. That’s all they have going for them. They don’t want to face voters in ’18 or ’20 without something to show for it. They’re just praying Trump doesn’t do something really, really stupid before the tax bill.
Me: Like a nuclear war?
He: Look, all I can tell you is many of the people I talk with are getting freaked out. It’s not as if there’s any careful strategizing going on. Not like, well, do we balance the tax bill against nuclear war? No, no. They’re worried as hell. They’re also worried about Trump crazies, all the ignoramuses he’s stirred up. I mean, Roy Moore? How many more of them do you need to destroy the party?
Me: So what’s gonna happen?
He: You got me. I’m just glad I’m not there anymore. Trump’s not just a moron. He’s a despicable human being. And he’s getting crazier. Paranoid. Unhinged. Everyone knows it. I mean, we’re in shit up to our eyeballs with this guy.
Unbelievable. They’re freaked out because hey the idiot toddler is likely to start a nuclear war any minute, but they won’t do anything about it because tax bill, because their careers, because the voters might get mad at them.
Profiles in courage, I tell you what.
Forgot to say: H/t Sackbut.
Profiles in courage, indeed.
David Frum had a good point in an interview on Lawrence O’Donnell’s show the other night. He said that one of the ironies in this fiasco is that the critical blows are going to be struck by increasingly less courageous Republicans. As he noted, Republicans with real conscience spoke up against Trump a long time ago. Bob Corker isn’t exactly a brave renegade himself, and had been pretty friendly with Trump until recently. The crucial step will be when the most opportunistic, whichever-way-the-wind-blows Republican members finally decide that it’s safe to oppose Trump.
“When you lose the opportunists, then you’re really in trouble… and so what you will have is Republicans of ever-worse character standing up later and later….”
(I would note: the die-hards may never desert Trump, but that’s ok, there were some Republicans who stuck with Nixon to the end, too.)
And the thing about the tax bill is, that probably isn’t for the rank and file, it’s for them (and their uber-rich donors). The rank and file are more interested in the wall, in Obamacare, in making sure those Muslims don’t come into the country. They’re not going to see much, if anything, from the tax bill, so they won’t notice if it passes or doesn’t. But the donors that give the really big bucks…they will notice.
There are those small quantity of House Republicans in districts that are competitive with Democrats. They’ve got more of that concern about general elections than primaries, relatively speaking. They don’t need courage or genuine moral character so much as that different fear profile to do some job: if swing voters there regard Trump support more and more negatively, they can afford to exercise it less and less, even if it means their primary chances are trickier. (If it does – Republican primary voters in such districts may be a bit more concerned about electability in the general election than others are, since they have to be for their candidate, and they may be less extreme as a reflection of the district as a whole.)
For Senators, it’s a matter of whole states as the district each time, which may be why it’s so much less of a haven for partisan whack-jobs.
On the Cabinet side, presumably all or most of these department-suicide-vehicles would be at least as safe under a Pence Administration as a Trump one – and with better working conditions – and I doubt any of them experience human feelings like gratitude or loyalty to Trump, so as long as they can keep indulging in their own practically treasonous bits of administrative terrorism, they should be fine jettisoning the weak link at the top.
That Cabinet can also probably keep delivering the “goods” for the Republican voter base that iknklast highlights too.
Sad thing about a Trump impeachment is, what makes it likely enough is so much about the limited good it would do. Still, not having a nuclear war, that’s not nothing.
That’s right, people. They just didn’t notice the part about pushing the world towards nuclear war (etc. etc.) until now. A simple mistake to make, really. After all it’s not the kind of thing that stands out, is it…
I’m ignorant of how the American system works. In a parliamentary system there would be enough ruling party MPs to join with the Opposition and hold a vote of no confidence to bring down a similarly unhinged Prime Minister. The mechanics for stopping crazy leaders in the American system seem far more complicated.
However maybe there will be a tipping point – as with Weinsten:-
“The fall of Harvey Weinstein reminds me of an important phenomenon in the social sciences – that of preference falsification, as described by Timur Kuran.
Recall another despot, Nicolae Ceausescu. For years, he faced little dissent because people were afraid to speak out. Fearing that their friends or neighbours would shun them or denounce them to the secret police, Ceausescu’s critics kept quiet. They falsified their preferences. And because dissent was so rarely heard, others also kept their own hatred of Ceausescu to themselves. There was an equilibrium of silence: millions hated Ceausescu but kept quiet which incentivized others to keep quiet.
That equilibrium lasted for years, but it was brittle. When Ceausescu gave a speech on December 21st 1989 a few in the audience began to jeer. This emboldened others to express their true opinion and within days Ceausescu was dead.”
http://stumblingandmumbling.typepad.com/stumbling_and_mumbling/2017/10/the-costs-of-suppression.html
You need to express this in language the fools can understand.
Trump most go, whether it’s by means of the 25th or the 2nd, he will go.
Their choice.
I reckon that would fit in a tweet.
Nogbert: Just… no. If we go there, then we go to accepting the idea that the side with the most guns wins, always.
If this weren’t so real I’d say Woody Allen wrote it.
But isn’t he from Manhattan?
It’s a metropolitan conversation so it works.
In a fit of blind rage, I made a similar suggestion here over a week ago much more bluntly and profanely, for which I was politely and properly upbraided by Ophelia. However much we may be tempted to wish it in such moments, nothing good can come of that.
Thank you Bruce and Freemage.