George Will: Servile To Trump, Republicans Make Impeachment Implausible

Ted

FYI: If congressional Democrats will temper their enthusiasm for impeachment with lucidity about the nation’s needs and their political self-interest, they will understand the self-defeating nature of a foredoomed attempt to remove a president for aesthetic reasons. Such reasons are not trivial but they are insufficient, particularly when almost all congressional Republicans are complicit in, by their silence about, Donald Trump’s comportment.

Impeachment can be retrospective, for offenses committed, or prospective, to prevent probable future injuries to the nation. Greg Weiner is a Madison scholar par excellence and author of a new book on a subject — prudence — that Democrats should contemplate (“Old Whigs: Burke, Lincoln, and the Politics of Prudence”). Elsewhere, he writes this about what he calls “one of the Constitution’s most solemn powers”:

“The purpose of impeachment is not punitive. It is prophylactic. Criminal law looks backward toward offenses committed. The object of impeachment is not to exact vengeance. It is to protect the public against future acts of recklessness or abuse.”
Regards,
Ted
https://lmtribune.com/opinion/servile-to-trump-republicans-make-impeachment-implausible/article_9eea4907-20ad-5b3c-a794-89b8c5d2b734.html

Crash

"...Attempting to overturn the result of a presidential election is a momentous undertaking. In 1998, when Republicans impeached Bill Clinton for lying about sex with an intern, the public punished them for what it considered a grossly disproportionate response. Today, many Democrats are fixated on Trump’s possible obstruction of the investigation into an offense — conspiracy with Russia — for which the investigation did not find sufficient evidence. Prudent Democrats will not propose removing Trump because, for example, they think he had a corrupt intention when he exercised a core presidential power in firing FBI Director James Comey.

What can accurately be called aesthetic considerations are, however, powerfully germane. As Alexander Hamilton wrote in Federalist 65, impeachable offenses should “relate chiefly to injuries done immediately to the society itself.” Trump’s incessant lying and increasingly contemptible coarseness are as reprehensible as was Richard Nixon’s surreptitious criminality. And — because they are constant, public and hence desensitizing — they will inflict more long-term damage to America’s civic life than Nixon’s misdeeds did."

Yes, the Trumpster is a boor without a conscience. It's not guesswork to be able to assert that. What else do we need? Both major parties are corporatists. But at least the Demublicans give a passing THOUGHT, still, to ethics. The Repugnants? Anything like ETHICS has been chased out of that Party long ago. Waiting for the Repugnant-led Senate to find its soul again is like waiting for a train that doesn't run anymore. If all ya wanna do is to pass the time, that could work.