Under the new “no omnibus threads” rules, Yes. 
I’ve wondered about this and the vote tally in the house. Why were there zero (0) R representatives worried about being more centrist in the house vote? Was the fear of losing the Trump base bigger than the hope for gaining some centrists in all 199 cases? I would have thought 1 or 2 or a dozen representatives would be in districts that are slightly blue or at least very, very lightly red. I would think in those districts the appearance of being a pure Trumpist would be detrimental, not helpful. But not 1 of them R representatives voted that way. Any thoughts why?
All of them are up for election this year. It’s better to have all of the base and hope you get some other votes, than lose the entire base. Essentially they are too pot heavy at this point, so they have no choice but to go all in.
(Emphasis added)
Some did warn against legalizing pot…
I would think in at least 1 moderate district the number of votes to be lost from the undecided voters when voting for impeachment would be more than the votes lost to hard line Trumpists who will just stay home. It isn’t as if the Trumpists are going to vote for the D candidate under any circumstances. When talking about a primary, here again I would think there is at least 1 moderate district in which voting for impeachment would garner more votes than it loses.
Obviously not one of the R representatives felt that way. Given the Blue Wave that happened in 2018 I have a hard time really understanding this. There were even a few D representatives that went the other way.
Their problem is that they would need some big, sudden revelation to justify a reverse of course now, (like Nixon’s tapes) – something that they could be sure would outweigh all of the base and then some. But Trump’s corruption just keeps emerging incrementally, so they can’t really discern how much of the rest of the voters will ultimately react.
Mix in some last minute rally around the flag war by the Republicans, as much voter suppression as you can get away with and a soupcon of foreign interference and you can win a lot of elections.
Hell, my Republican voting family wouldn’t even need the wool pulled over their eyes; they would favor these things explicitly in order to win elections and don’t even require the pretenses.
I think it’s because of the blue wave that we’re seeing this pattern. There simply aren’t all that many Republicans left in moderate districts, and almost none in Democratic-leaning ones, while there are a ton of (often newly-elected and potentially vulnerable) Democrats in slightly Republican-leaning districts. It’s actually surprising that there were so few Democratic defectors, given that there are, on paper, a lot more Democrats who might have an electoral incentive to defect.
At this point Congressional Republicans are more afraid of the Trump base deserting them in a primary election than the general election. What’s the point of appealing to moderate voters in November if you don’t make it through the primary this Spring?
Nothing would count. The MAGAts have already decided that a cold-blooded fatal shooting, committed in broad daylight on Fifth Avenue, would be fine and dandy.
Still, not-paying-much-attention fence-sitters might be impressed by the fact that Trump has been found to have broken an actual law. So this could have an effect.
Lev Parnas threatened that every time Individual 1 said he didn’t know him, he was going to post a photo of the two of them together.
He did one better. He posted a video of Individual 1 introducing him to people at Mar a Lago
Good point that the blue wave would have swept out many of the Republicans in moderate districts, but I still feel like terms “all that many” and “almost none” would lead to at least 1 Republican voting for impeachment. But your explanation makes sense.
Kent ClarkYou are right, but it just doesn’t quite fully make sense to me. If voting against impeachment in a moderate district means they would lose the general election for sure, the smart move would be vote for impeachment and take your chances in the primary and hope that enough moderate Republicans in the district could see the facts. In every.single.case, the republican representative thought their chances of losing the primary were higher than losing the election if they voted to impeach.
I agree with what you and Fretful Porpentine are saying, but I’d feel better if there were 1 or 2 or a few republicans who voted to impeach.
I guess, for a more concrete answer:
Oh, I dunno, to live by one’s principles?
Oh, wait. They were.
Can you connect those dots for me? I’m not seeing how bargaining for witnesses is linked to duress for Senators or how that would tell us which Senators are under duress and which ones aren’t. Also, as I said before, isn’t every Senator under duress?
Yes, and you also implied that there should be duress, which is false and I fail to see any argument in favor of it.
A close normal world example might be corporate hierarchy. It’s generally accepted that it would be bad for your superior, 3 levels up, to be jumping over the heads of his subordinates to give you orders, fire you, or whatever else.
Just because you are the boss does not mean that you can or should command the results (context depending). Once you delegate control of X to a particular person, then you are expected to stand back and *accept that you have delegated *.
And that’s just talking about voters.
If we were talking about two managers in a company, both wrangling for a bigger slice of the budget - where they know that it’s between them or the other guy - it’s one thing to send your boss some champagne and talk down the other team and another to tell all your underlings to insert malicious code into the services that the other team is going to take over.
At the end of the day, we’re all on the same team. Jostling and bargaining within your territory is fine and reasonable. Doing things that are in direct conflict with your duties, and harmful to the organization, just to get your way is not.
Thanks for the explanation. I admit, I’m not following but that is likely a shortcoming on my part. I appreciate the effort in trying to explain. I’ll reread this again later and see if I can understand it when I have a bit more time to digest. I get all the concepts you are talking about, I just don’t see how they all fit. I substituted the word “duress” instead of continually typing “having a proverbial gun to their head”, so I’m also confused why I’m being attributed with the requirement there should be duress.
So I’m clear, I’m just not understanding and I’m attributing that to me. I just need to digest it a bit more, I think. I don’t mean to dismiss the conversation but I don’t want to hijack it further.
First of all, the only reason there is not 1 Republican voting for impeachment is that Justin Amash, who was elected on the GOP ticket, had already left the party after coming out in favor of impeachment over the Mueller report.
Generally, I think there are a few reasons it’s still such a small number:
I think the biggest reason is that even if there is a bloc of moderate votes who would lean Republican but don’t want someone who will side with Trump over his corruption is probably already blaming the GOP for enabling Trump. I think Republicans in congress think that they won’t get enough credit if they side against Trump now and will end up without the die-hards or enough of the moderates. I’m sure supporting impeachment will get some of the anti-Trump moderates but I sizeable portion are going to turn Democrats at least in the short-term.
I think the herd mentality, and the makeup of the GOP after 2008 also matters. If there was already a group of Republicans defecting, you would probably somewhat of a contagious effect, but as it stands if you are one of the only GOP congressmen to support impeachment you are going to have a huge target on your back and it is an absolute guarantee that you will face as much pressure from the party as they can put on you. Another factor is the fact that GOP congressmen who would rather bet on surviving a primary challenge to appeal to a wider group of voters in the general were exactly the people the tea party targeted, so congress is now made up of people who themselves got there by challenging moderates in the primaries and some who had to adapt to survive the tea party.
Alan Dershowitz, Ken Starr, and Robert Ray. “A septuagenarian Fox News’s watchers idea of a legal dream team.” - Josh Marshall
Trump seems to have loaded his defense team with TV-friendly lawyers despite the fact that it remains to be seen if any of the proceedings will be televised.