Virtually the entire leadership of the conservative movement and the whole Republican congressional superstructure are at dangerous risk of massive political disaster.
They have put all their eggs in one basket, and it turns out that that basket is on a wall waiting to fall. Trump could take organized conservatism down with him in ways impossible to put back together again for a long, long time.
Conscience, statesmanship, and a sense of propriety all should lead conservatives to reserve at least some judgment on the Trump-Ukraine controversy. Even if those three elements fail, however, cynical political calculation should make them avoid the sort of histrionic defenses of Trump in which most of them are now engaged. They are forgetting the lessons of Watergate, where eventual proof of Nixonian wrongdoing led Republicans to suffer a nationwide political bloodbath in 1974.
No matter how much willful blindness these putative leaders employ, common sense and simple political survival instincts should tell them to hedge their pro-Trump bets. Plenty of evidence of presidential misbehavior already exists. Even if they want to argue that the available evidence isn’t worthy of impeachment, they should note warning signs that more damning evidence may emerge.
Even if conservative leaders mistakenly think the attempt to sic a foreign government on the Bidens is not impeachably wrong in itself, almost everyone has acknowledged that a quid pro quo involving military aid would be a great enough abuse of power to merit removal from office.
Yet we already know that Trump immediately replied to the Ukrainian president’s mention of military aid by asking a “favor” that involved chasing a conspiracy theory his own former national security adviser said had been “completely debunked” and then extended the demand to include an investigation into Trump’s political rivals, the Bidens.
In my opinion, the transcript of the July 25 call strongly hints at quid pro quo. Trump-appointed officials also questioned whether a direct tie existed between the aid and the Biden probe. We also know that at least a second whistleblower is poised to file a complaint and that others are expected to emerge as well. And reports have been rampant for weeks that multiple officials in the White House and the diplomatic corps were extremely worried about Trump’s behavior.
Meanwhile, Trump sounds ever more disturbed, spewing terms such as “coup,” “treason,” and even “civil war” with reckless abandon.
All these indices together should sound to conservative leaders like a tornado siren. Clearly, this situation is volatile, and clearly there’s a reasonable chance that some revelation of new, incontrovertible facts will render the defense of Trump no longer feasible. Political prudence should tell them to leave wiggle room for such eventualities.
Instead, on Monday the Conservative Action Project, an umbrella group that often releases joint statements from leaders of various rightist causes, published a defense-of-Trump manifesto signed by as many such leaders as I’ve ever seen sign a CAP memo. (Full disclosure: I myself signed plenty of CAP statements when I was a freelance columnist.) Ignoring the reality that Trump at least has waded into ethically dubious and unprecedented gray areas, CAP portrays the entire impeachment inquiry as “a partisan coup d’état” and as “insanity.”
In doing so, they join the House and Senate Republican leadership in emphatic, sometimes shrill attacks on the whole investigation.
Sen. Ben Sasse, a Nebraska Republican, has the more statesmanlike and politically wiser approach. “Follow the facts one step at a time,” Sasse said. Facts first, verdict afterwards. What a novel concept. Other Republicans and conservatives should try it sometime, before their political fortunes end up in a Humpty-like, unfixable, rotten egg mess.
