A better question is trying to determine who actually believes that the president is actually innocent of all charges, who believes that he’s guilty, but they don’t care because at least he’s not a radical socialist Democrat, and who believes he’s guilty and do care, but are afraid to speak up for fear of being skewered on Twitter and primaried by the bully in the White House. There have been threats, both overt and implied, that any Republican who steps out of line is the enemy, human scum, even, and will be harshly dealt with.
As to what to do about it? Not much that the average person can do except call them out and exercise their voting rights.
Sage Rat indicated majority voting to determine policy or rules is only valid if those voting are not under duress. I’m wondering how he would determine objectively who of the voting members are under duress. Absent any way to make that determination, using a majority vote is, as he noted, the way thing should be done.
Your questions are the ones I’d really, really like to get answers to, without a doubt. As would most of us, I think. Unfortunately, we never will.
Note that Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is apparently “fine” with this treatment of one of the ambassadors for whom he is responsible.
We need to hear from Mr. Pompeo under oath, as to why he had no problem with these shenanigans (which have direct bearing on what His Obscene Majesty was trying to get the Ukrainian President to commit to doing in aid of HOM’s re-election campaign).
Fair is fair, and it is ludicrous to suggest that it’s independent of context. The context being that the House impeachment inquiries were NOT stonewalled by the Clinton WH.
I didn’t suggest that they did. It was, fairly clearly, a hypothetical built to establish that context can be relevant.
For a “proverbial gun”, it would depend on what form of gun might exist. But a fairly general way would be to look at expected output versus actual output.
Under full Constitutionality, Congressmen are intended to be individuals that are known within their electoral districts by the local land-owning males, and whom they view as being respectable and able to be trusted to represent the interests of the people of the electoral district and able to be trusted to make decisions on their own that the local people would feel was reasonable if they had the time and inclination to become fully informed on the subject.
Under full Constitutionality, it would also be clear to these individuals that they are being held to a high standard. It is their job to personify thousands or millions of people and freely deliberate and vote with their full power. Likewise, he is expected to police the Executive Branch through his oversight duties and impeachment/removal trial mandates and to obey the Bill of Rights, even where its philosophical outlays may directly infringe on the ability of the government to do good.
And under full Constitutionality, it should be possible to vote on things as majorities and supermajorities, based on the merit of the topic in question. It is clearly not the intention that the concept of a “supermajority” was included in the Constitution as a proxy for “your party got 66% of the vote!? Woohoo dawg, you do anything you want!” Nor, for that matter, was the concept of a simple majority.
The explicit intent of the Constitution and the raison d’etre of a representative government is to elect, as said, trustworthy and empowered individuals who are reasonable and faithful about things like the limitations imposed by the Bill of Rights and the rules imposed by the Constitution. And that is to prevent the tyranny of the majority. Raw passion, simple understandings of issues, greed, tribalism, religious doctrine, should not be the basis of the output of the government. The people can and do litigate subjects in such simple and inexcusable ways, and it is the job of the representative to be a better person than that.
Based on that somewhat reduced and simplified explanation of the intentions underlying the Constitution, and without going in to any specifics of modern day or anything else, what would you say, are things operating as fully intended or simply in accordance with some technical aspects of the precise lettering? *
Though, obviously, we can ignore the bit about “land-owning males”.
The Government Accountability Office has issued a legal opinion memo saying that the President broke the law when he withheld funding authorized by Congress to the Ukraine.
Unfortunately we are not dealing with a hypothetical situation. The Senate will be conducting a trial and they will need to set rules. And the rule about making the rules is that a majority of the senators must agree to them. I don’t know how else to operate in the real world. It isn’t perfect, but it is the best we have.
That isn’t to say I disagree with your hypothetical. If it could be determined some of the voting members of the body were under duress, we would need to figure out how to relieve that pressure to get a fair vote. 100% agree.
Personally, I’d say things are operating as intended, for the most part. The “gun” is the threat of being primaried or removed from office by failing to gain reelection. That strongly implies the majority of the voting constituents for the Senators with the gun to their head are in alignment with the how the Senator is being pressured to vote. If the folks back home felt differently, the gun would be forcing them Senator to vote the other way. Similarly, most of the D Senators equally have a gun to their head, knowing full well they better vote guilty or they will face the backlash of their constituency. Either way, every Senator does have a gun to their head. I’m not sure that will ever go away and I don’t know that it should. The Senator should feel pressure to vote in alignment with how the people he/she is representing would vote if they were there instead.
Their dilemma is more complicated than that. All across the country, Trump commands a rock solid base that will vote for him no matter what. Somewhere around 35%. Not enough, in most cases, where the divide is closer. Especially as the Dems/Progs are feeling rather more motivated themselves.
So, most senators are going to have to get some votes from moderate/sane side. 51% is not a big win, but it is a win, 35% is not. Senator Throckmorton has a choice: he can stick with his base and pander to them, and still hope to get some of us to go along (unlikely), or betray the Trump base and play to the middle, against a candidate who centrist/sane *boney fidoes * are not of such recent vintage (doom).
And now the impeachment inquiry is officially over. The Senate trial will begin Tuesday at 1pm. I found the pomp and circumstance of the oaths and signing felt somber and momentous. I’m glad I got a chance to watch it. I admit I was waiting for someone to show out. I’m glad I was wrong. I noticed the Chief Justice’s hands were shaking a bit as he called the senators to take their oaths.
