A lot of people, including, I’m sure, President Trump himself, took it for granted that Republicans would save him in the impeachment showdown. But that’s not necessarily true.
Consider that only by a razor-thin margin did Senate Republicans reject the admission of yet more evidence and witnesses for the trial. (The right thing to do, given that process should have happened in the House.)
The GOP’s narrow hold on the Senate, coupled with Republicans’ natural tendency to shake in horror anytime the national media calls them cowards, could have meant a very different outcome for the president.
But there is a handful of lawmakers who really did come through for Trump, even as Democrats and the media rained fire on them in the form of 24-hour TV news coverage demanding that they rebuke the president; that they conduct the trial on the Democrats’ terms; and that they hang their heads in absolute shame over ever having supported a president who has a 94% approval rating among Republican voters.
The party unity was, in some ways, shocking. It’s almost as if they were Democrats or something.
Democrats started the impeachment process on the premise that Trump had withheld foreign aid to Ukraine with the intent of hurting Joe Biden ahead of the 2020 election. It was up to Republicans to tell the other side of the story, that Trump had a legitimate reason to ask the head of Ukraine about Biden and his middle-aged son Hunter’s dealings in Ukraine with Burisma Holdings, a shady energy company.
GOP Rep. Elise Stefanik of New York was the one to do that clearest, by getting former U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch to admit that State Department officials in the Obama administration had also had concerns about Burisma and the Bidens.
Rep. Devin Nunes of New York and Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky led the way in making the “whistleblower” a central figure in the impeachment and ensuring that he not fade into obscurity. Paul was the first lawmaker to say on national TV that the public deserved to know his name and threatened to state it himself. Nunes, during one of the hearings, all but exposed Democratic Rep. Adam Schiff as having coordinated with the whistleblower.
Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina said from the beginning that he didn’t see an impeachable offense in Trump’s conduct, nor would he vote to remove him from office. He never wavered.
And Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, despite having to conduct the trial, never lied. He said it would take place, that Democrats wouldn’t be calling the shots, and that it would end fairly quickly without incident. All of that, in the end, was true.
One can often count on Republicans to fall apart at the finish line, but that didn’t happen this time.
Trump would be smart to recognize that.
