I think it’s pretty super obvious after today’s presser that, no, he does not want to be impeached. He wants to be liked, appreciated, even idolized. And there’s no brand benefit to impeachment, as someone already mentioned. He understands branding very well.
I can see a brand benefit from impeachment. It feeds the narrative of victimhood that Trump and his supporters wallow in. I have no doubt we will see Trump ratcheting up the rhetoric even more than he has. We've already heard threats of civil war from some Trump supporter and if it actually looks like Trump might be removed from office we will enter a very dangerous time for this country. I'm very supportive of impeachment but there is danger from this that is more than just political.
There also appears to be no brand benefit to being POTUS. Trump branded properties are losing money since his election, not withstanding Trump and his entourage spending 1/3 of this time as President visiting Trump branded properties. Trump's very big brain may have miscalculated this whole Presidential Adventure.
From a political standpoint, I think impeachment helps him. It re-energizes a demoralized GOP base. The wayward GOP members can be pulled back by pointing to how Dems are crazy. It helps him with his "witchhunt / I'm a victim" mentality with conservative-leaning moderates that don't like him. Anyone on the middle/left that didn't like him already or wanted him impeached were already going to vote Dem, so it doesn't gain them anything. Just look at Bill Clinton - impeachment galvanized the left to rally around a President who cheated on a first lady they loved.
Richard Nixon was going to be booted from office and left public life - that won't happen here due to the Senate. Trump will still run for re-election, and the impeachment vote will be with a partisan divide. The general consensus for Nixon when he resigned was well over 300 votes ready to impeach in the House and close the 67 needed in the Senate. And that was *before* the tapes were released. There's a reason Pelosi tried to avoid impeachment at all costs until she was forced into it. She understands the political ramifications for 2020.
I don't think she is right here, I think it is how you message it in the modern world - that matters, I don't believe impeachment will hurt at all......or help the republicans. Especially if you canvas it with the law being broken and hang a noose around those that supported that behavior.....and how American's deserve better - someone that respects the law - and doesn't lie about it - and pretend, but someone that respects facts..... DD
You don't need impeachment to do any of those things, though. Remember - this is not a court of law. At the end of the day, you're going to have Democrats voting to impeach, and Republicans voting not to convict. People who were inclined to believe he's guilty will continue to do so. So will those who weren't. It's no different than how Dems and independents shrugged off Bill Clinton's impeachment because they thought it was primarily a political stunt. What you'd need for any kind of shift is for well-respected Republicans to vote for impeachment, and that seems extremely unlikely. Say a Mitt Romney or someone of that level.
I'm not so sure how unlikely it is, given the whistleblower report and the investigation to come. (And nevermind what POTUS himself does and says in the weeks ahead.)* I do believe there is some political threshold where a group of GOP politicians will say "this is just too toxic, and we can still have a GOP without slavish endorsement of this person." A Rubio, a Romney. Even Burr and people like that. You are probably right to be cynical about these prospects. I grant you that. * = EDIT: posted this minutes before he suggested snitches for the whistleblower should be executed.
I think on smaller issues, that would be true. They are happy to make some statements or vote against some judges or things like that. But the only people the last 3 years that have come out strongly in opposition to anything Trump has done are people who are retiring (Corker, Flake, etc). People like Rubio want to have a bright political future or a positive legacy, and anyone who votes for impeachment will essentially be done forever in the GOP. It would be a pointless vote too, since you need 67 votes to convinct. It might be different if there were close to enough to actually make a difference.
Republicans will bail when they see the shift in the electorate - if the majority after hearing the facts begin to support impeachment they will follow. DD
Not if they remove Trump and the other GOP candidate actually has a better chance of getting elected and they win in 2020.
If your President is removed from office, the stain is on the party - the GOP replacement candidate isn't winning in 2020 and the party will get obliterated. From a "party-over-country" standpoint, the GOP has no choice but to rally around Trump. They've invested too much in defending him, and they ran out all the moderates. The party's base is now Trump-fanatics.
Yup. Having a president removed that was of your party is absolutely devistating to the party. There is little to no chance Trump gets removed from office seeing how the Senate is GOP controlled but if by the small chance he does, no chance the GOP candidate whom ever he or she be wins 2020. The party will be fractured. And because of this, there is little to no chance the GOP as a whole will give up on Trump. They need him to succeed for the party to succeed.
Definitely, but there way forward is to treat it like a waxing. It's going to hurt, it's going to burn, but it must be done and the sooner the better. They will have to see that there is no way forward with Trump and that they will just have to take their medicine and move on from him and salvage a respectable minority that can fight back. I think there is a way for them to move on without Trump but they have to do it before any more damning evidence comes out. In January this could be crippling to them, especially if there is more to come (there is...) and if it is even more damning then they can be sure their Democratic opponents will use it against them in every campaign possible...or at least they should. Polls are already shifting against them. Of course the strategy now to ride this out could play out well for them if they are able to basically downplay the charge, which I see is talking point of some (It's not a big deal anyway, just Trump being Trump) but they can convince Trump stans of that, can they convince the rest of the country of that? But I agree, they ran away the moderates, so I don't expect it happening. I think the House is going to go through with the impeachment at this point, especially now that the polls are favoring the action and we know the DNC is a slave to polling, it'll be interesting to see what Moscow Mitch does with it then. I do think if it gets into the Senate then it's going to happen. I think a lot of these Senators, Cruz, Rubio, Collins, Rand, Murkowski, Romney a few more I'm sure, impeaching Trump wouldn't hurt them at all.
I like how the galvanizing/demoralizing only works in one direction for you - it's a positively charged ion or something. One base is rallied, the other is not rallied. The revisionist history of the Clinton impeachment has been discussed elsewhere so no need to get into that here. Counterpoint - All these rally the base arguments are bullshit. MAGA people rally because MAGA. That's what they do. Send them back, lock her up, whatever whatever. The "conservative-leaning moderates" that don't like him number a few hundred in the country, unfortunately they occupy roughly 40% of column space at the New York Times and certain other both-sides friendly outlets. Who honestly ****ing cares if Bret Bedbug Stephens or Davy Boy Brooks is tsk tsk tsking. You? Me? MAGA people? Nope. Likewise, nobody really cares if Ben Sasse or Mitt Romney is going to talk himself back from being "disturbed" in a few weeks after witnessing meanie House members send their cartoonishly corrupt dear leader to him for his stamp of approval - that's a net zero in any political calculus.
Except that is just not true, Nixon was Impeached, and Carter won in '76, but Reagan won in '80 - hardly all that devastating. The Republicans will just rebrand. DD
