Sadly this appalling mess and the likelihood that Trump will be acquitted goes back to Jan 2016 when Trump stated that he could “stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody” and not lose any voters.
Looking from abroad (I’m in the UK), I am so sorry for America that the Republican party basically supports Trump, even when he causes deaths through an insurrectionist mob.
Hopefully Congress will stop with the political theater and get on with some real work.
Political theater. Oh, you mean like all those Benghazi hearings?
Holding someone accountable for trying to overthrow the United Sates Government is not what I would call ‘political theater’.
Bolding mine. And perhaps the best typo I’ve seen in months. Or maybe it was deliberate. Either way, well done.
Then the republican senators will be on the record as supporting insurrection.
Then what?
Then republican voters will continue to vote for them…
I think that, for the 14th Amendment to apply, there would pretty much have to be a criminal trial, because that’s how we determine that someone did something illegal. Congress voting on it directly looks to me like a bill of attainder.
And now Republicans know that murdering their political opponents is perfectly OK if you lose an election. This is going to be built into their playbook going forward.
Lose an election? No problem. Just whip up a mob into a frenzy with outright lies and send them to murder your opponents. No worries - the Republican Party has now deemed that acceptable.
Republicans seem to have not considered that the next demagogue in the White House could be a left wing radical who incites a mob of Antifa, Black Lives Matter, communists, illegals, atheists, lesbians and baby killers, and they’ll be coming for THEM.
This group is not bound by the normal rules of debate, it’s raw power politics with them with no apologies and no remorse.
Some think that might be happen, but many don’t.
I think they correctly realized that the impeachment vote did not create any enforceable precedent.
Some Democrats were saying that if you don’t convict for this, you can’t convict ever. But that’s not true. If the polls say strongly enough, next time, to convict, they will.
Many Republican voters assume that describes who’s in the White House right now, or at least the person who’s a heartbeat away from becoming President. But their solution isn’t to reject demagoguery in all it’s forms – it’s to demand that their representatives do everything in their power to protect their demagogue so he can save them from the approaching liberal tyranny.
So let me ask, do you think that there should be any commission or public process that aims to present findings of fact about what took place at the Capitol on January 6th? Any at all? Should we just move on and forget the whole thing?
I can accept that there can be legitimate differences of opinion about whether there should have been an impeachment trial for a president who’s no longer in office – reasonable people can disagree. I tend to view the Democrats’ efforts as two fold:
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Given the time frame and the promptness with which the House acted, I saw the impeachment articles as an attempt to get Trump out of office immediately, hoping the Cabinet, with Senate pressure, would force Trump to leave. That was a legitimate, reasonable exercise, IMO. I don’t see how any other than a hardcore Trumpist couldn’t see it that way.
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Once it became apparent that the GOP wasn’t really behind impeachment, they did it anyway, knowing he’d be acquitted but felt compelled to do so hoping that there could be a process that revealed more facts to the general public. Again, legitimate, IMO. Hurried, incomplete, but legitimate, even if the president is out of office and there’s no chance of a conviction.
How is that political theater?
Now that the impeachment is over, would you or would you not support the formation of a bipartisan commission similar to the 9/11 commission?
Doubtful.
An authoritarian in this country is likely to be a right wing demagogue. That doesn’t mean that conservatives are necessarily safer, though. Maybe in the short run, yes, but in the long run, autocrats make enemies of all stripes.
It’s political theater because the left is perfectly fine with mob violence employed for political gain. They just aren’t fine when they aren’t in control of the mob.
Which leftists did you interview for this research finding of yours?
You seem to have no problem with the right being perfectly fine with mob violence.
Hmm…