What does McConnell have to do with it. It is up to the house to impeach and the senate presided over by Roberts to try the case. I don’t think McConnell could stop the process.
If Trump started making solid moves toward dismantling the military-industrial complex, the Republicans would find something to hang him on. He doesn’t show much of an inclination in that regard, though.
You see, Republicans are all about free markets, fiscal rectitude through a balanced budget, and a strong national defense. The markets are free to do whatever Trump wants, Trump balances lavish spending with equally lavish tax cuts, and makes for damn sure he does whatever he can to defend nations in faraway lands from drone victims.
The whole point of this thread is that Dems don’t have enough to impeach (at least in the Senate). I’m wondering what it would take for Republicans to get on board. Surely there is a breaking point at which Republicans would feel they had to impeach regardless of support (Trump murders a gaggle of liberals), and there is a point at which he would lose popular support so Pubs felt it in their best interests to impeach.
Please be the sound baffling in our echo chamber and explain the Dem’s misunderstanding of the Trump supporter’s mind and maybe speculate on where you think the red lines for the party and supporters are.
FWIW, I’m not sure if a successful impeachment would be in the best interest of the country or even the Democrats at this point.
OH, FFS. You know damn well that in popular language “impeachment” is shorthand for the entire process of impeachment, trial, and conviction. There is nothing - NOTHING - ambiguous about an OP that asks “What, if anything, could convince the Pubs that that they either had to, or wanted to, impeach Trump?” Every single person in this thread understood it.
I’m pretty sure every single person in this thread also understood your ludicrous attempt at deflection, too, but I’m in the mood to call attention to it. It doesn’t even reach the heights of petty. Your “other side” has not been saying anything in this thread other than obvious truths about “your side.” You can’t turn that into an exhibition of lunacy. This whole thread has been a perfect example of embracing reality, a disgusting, dismaying, disincentivizing reality, but reality. Your comment deliberately distorts that. We’re reading each other perfectly well. And will continue to do so as long as “your side” jettisons reality from its rhetoric.
Republicans. Clinton. 1998.
Yeah, that might do it. But just to be on the safe side, getting a sex-change operation as well would put it over the top.
It’s cute that you think this is true.
I’d ask for an explanation as to what this really means, but I doubt if there’s coherent rationale behind this gibberish.
I reject that. When I say impeachment, I mean impeachment. The purpose of The Straight Dope is to fight ignorance. We should use words properly.
A Mueller indictment (or recommendation to indict) of Trump himself for something directly tied to the campaign or in office. It can’t be an indictment tied strictly to the investigation like lying in a statement to the FBI. I don’t expect Republicans to be less partisan about those types of indictments than Democrats were about Clinton lying under oath in court. I also don’t expect a Senate conviction on anything that isn’t actually criminal using the vagueness of “high crimes and misdemeanors” given our current hyperpartisanship.
Maybe Mueller and senior members of his investigation have the weight of evidence needed and are waiting to finish other aspects of the investigation. Maybe they don’t. It’s really hard to tell for the rest of us. Only Mueller and some of his key investigators have full access to all the relevant information. They’ve been very good about limiting leaks. At this point, the most important data point we have is the actions of an experienced prosecutor and law enforcement officer with the access to all the collected evidence. Mueller hasn’t publicly asserted that the preponderance of the evidence shows wrongdoing by Trump. If he ever does, I’d expect the political dynamic to change.
Even the Democratic leadership in Congress haven’t called for impeachment. It’s probably a little early to be worrying about what will convince Republicans when Pelosi and Schumer aren’t convinced yet.
I’m not sure that they should. Donald Trump is single handedly destroying the GOP brand.
There’s an adage: “Never stop an opponent when they are making a mistake.”
If it is shown that the Trump campaign coordinated illegally to influence the election with a foreign power, I’d support his impeachment and removal. And I’m a Republican, only because they’re the party that most closely aligns with my values, not because I’m a passionate partisan.
But everyone deserves a fair shake. If his hands are clean of collusion, we shouldn’t be calling for his head simply because he’s personally just not a very nice guy.
I can respect a call for precision in word use, but did you really not know what I meant?
Yup. The GOP “leadership” will follow the polling, although it is an open question if all voter polling matters as much as polls of those who vote in GOP primaries.
“Fake news” and “whataboutism” would keep pretty much any crime from reaching enough to get GOP voters (and thus Congresscritters) from abandoning him below his base of support (that low 30s overall) … he’s delivered in giving him the judges they want, that’s worth looking the other way for almost anything.
The economy tanking is the only thing that would do it. I do not hope for that … but realistically we are due for a downturn no matter who is in office. If it happens as high crimes are proven beyond reasonable doubt, that’s what would get the GOP voters to turn, and then the leaders follow.
It is going to happen in 2020, shortly after a Democrat is elected. 
“The man who is a pessimist before 48 knows too much; if he is an optimist after it he knows too little.” - Mark Twain
Go right ahead and use it properly. Nevertheless, it would be nonsensical to you to pretend that everyone participating in the thread didn’t understand exactly what the word meant when used in the common colloquial manner. And far worse when someone, as in this case, deliberately obfuscates the meaning and everyone’s proven understanding to try to score a point in a drive-by.
Impeachment is a textbook case of synecdoche, the use of a part to stand for the whole. That’s a time-worn and utterly proper development of language. There are times and places to separate the part. But this ain’t one.
When I talk about impeachment, I say impeachment. When I want to talk about impeachment and conviction, I say impeachment and conviction/removal.
These are very different things.
“Bill Clinton was impeached” doesn’t mean he was convicted.
It’s almost like saying that “he was tried in court” means the same as “tried and convicted”.
Indeed it is.
I may have it missed it, but if Congress impeaches, the Senate (of course) can vote it down but time their decision to coincide with the heat of the 2020 election. This would position Trump as ‘vindicated’ and thus more than fit for four more! (He would then step down in 2021, perhaps for ‘medical reasons’ as mentioned upthread, and be succeeded by . . . by someone).
Care to add anything in the spirit of discussion?
I’m genuinely curious what it would take to get Republicans (Cogress critters and voters respectively) to support impeachment/removal of Trump.
I think the former group could be persuaded if Mueller’s investigation turns up conclusive evidence of quid-pro-quo collusion with Putin beyond just election meddling and prospective real estate deals to something that includes a clear personal benefited to Trump to the detriment of US national security.
Would that be enough also to convince most Republican voters? Maybe if it were so blatant that it couldn’t rationally be interpreted as anything other than betrayal of his country.
I’m not sure what would convince the die-hard Trumpists that their man has to go.
From your perspective, what would it take for a) the Republican party, b) Republican voters, and c) Trumpists, respectively, to support removal of Trump?