Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) made it clear this week that the route the Senate takes to reach its conclusion on impeachment is trivial when the outcome’s predetermined.
“I will say, I’m pretty sure how it’s likely to end,” McConnell said Tuesday. “If it were today, I don’t think there’s any question it would not lead to a removal.”
While the end-result reached by a Republican-majority Senate is seemingly a foregone conclusion, many Trump allies are urging McConnell to think long and hard about how he allows proceedings to take place.
The effort may not be coordinated, but pro-Trump pundits outside the beltway have projected a unified message in recent weeks, calling on McConnell to ditch the notion of a fair trial and urging the majority leader to either only allow for something short and sweet or to dismiss the articles of impeachment outright.
In the most recent push to pressure McConnell away from a protocol, conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt urged McConnell to harken back to his glory days, when he stonewalled the Obama administration from rightfully appointing a Supreme Court justice to replace the late-Justice Antonin Scalia, who passed in the last year of Obama’s second term. In a Washington Post column Thursday, Hewitt admitted he once favored the idea of an extensive trial that would allow Republicans to poke holes in the House’s evidence and, ultimately, keep some Democratic 2020 contenders out of Iowa and New Hampshire. But, he argued, a long or short trial would also give legitimacy to Democrats’ inquiry.
Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani and conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh have both made similar arguments in recent weeks, pressing the majority leader to ignore rules they deemed arbitrary and outright kill the inquiry on arrival. Giuliani said it would be “horrible” if the Senate decided to host a trial.
Limbaugh had more biting words for McConnell.
“The Turtle said, ‘Hey, if we do it, there’s gotta be a trial.’ There’s nobody in official Republican strata that’s trying to refute this! They’re all dealing with it as though it’s a fait accompli. It’s not a fait accompli. But, see, there’s a whole different mentality about this stuff when you live in the Beltway,” he said on his show last month.
Fox News’ Laura Ingraham urged McConnell in a similar direction, but under the caveat of a rule change that was also championed by the National Review in early October. Ingraham suggested on her show at the end of last month that McConnell allow Democrats to have their trial, but to make it “blisteringly short.”
“(Give) Democrats maybe an afternoon to put on their sham case,” she said. “Republicans in the Senate need to step up or get out.”
Mum’s the word on what direction McConnell plans to take. While Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) has made it clear he wants an adequate trial, McConnell told Politico this week that he has not yet met with the other side to determine the chamber’s course of action.
But given the vicious divide over the legitimacy of the impeachment probe, it’s safe to assume this Senate will likely not take a page from the Clinton impeachment-era Senate and hash out a bipartisan deal in the Old Senate Chamber.
Cheating worked before. Cheat harder now.
Stopped clock. Blind squirrel. Right, but for all the wrong reasons.
It’s all going to depend on public opinion and outrage. They can’t get away with it if the voters think the process is legitimate and that Moscow Mitch and the Rs are trying to short circuit the process to protect an obviously guilty Trump. That’s why having the open hearings and piling up the evidence in the House is so important.
Agree, this is all just noise.
Republicans will make a huge error not having a proper trial…it will go over great with their base, but the American people will expect a proper trial. And, if they don’t have a trial, then Trump won’t have an opportunity to refute what is likely to be a devastating case against him, except through public propaganda. Americans watch trial TV all the time, both real and fictional, they will understand what it means for the Republicans in the Senate to put on a sham trial or not have one at all: they are afraid to hold an honest trial with evidence presented for and against Trump.
They may think this will save the Senate for them, as Republican senators won’t have to vote and risk alienating anyone. Tying themselves to a lawless process to clear Trump will be far worse for their electoral chances though, as the Trump base won’t save the ones in danger if the rest of the nation is enraged over a sham trial process.