Impeachment Vote Is as Much About Tribalism as Trumpism -The iPINIONS Journal

Mitt Romney is a former Republican presidential nominee. As such he commands considerable respect in political and media circles.

This is why many “Never Trumpers” are looking to him to take up the mantle of the late Republican Senator John McCain, namely as President Trump’s most credible and indignant critic in Congress.

Arguably, Romney has been rehearsing for years to play this role. After all, here is the famous warning he gave about Trump’s black-swan election as president of the United States:

Donald Trump is a phony, a fraud; his promises are as worthless as a degree from Trump University.

He’s playing the members of the American public for suckers; he gets a free ride to the White House and all we get is a lousy hat.

He has neither the temperament nor the judgment to be president and his personal qualities would mean that America would cease to be a shining city on a hill.

(The New York Times, March 3, 2016)

That’s why nobody should be surprised that his presidency has come, inexorably, to this:

A divided House approved legislation Thursday formally authorizing and articulating guidelines for the next phase of its impeachment inquiry. …

The 232-196 vote, which hewed closely to party lines, was likely to fuel the partisan fighting that has accompanied every stage of the impeachment probe and much of the Trump presidency.

At issue is whether Trump abused the power of his office to pressure a foreign leader to investigate his domestic political rivals.

(The Washington Post, October 31, 2019)

Alas, this vote suggests that Romney criticizing Trump among Republicans would be tantamount to John the Baptist preaching in the wilderness. Because, with it, every Republican member said that it’s okay for Trump to, among other high crimes and misdemeanors,

bribe foreign leaders (with taxpayer-funded foreign aid no less) to dig up or manufacture dirt on his political opponents (i.e., a quid pro quo);
encourage foreign countries to meddle in US presidential elections (Trump is now willfully meddling in UK elections in a vain attempt to make Putin meddling in US elections seem … normal);
tell his “fixer” to payoff porn stars to keep quiet about their extramarital affairs and then instruct that fixer to lie under oath about their schemes;
rally staff to help him obstruct justice in the 10 ways Robert Mueller documented in his report;
aid and abet his accountants in falsifying tax and other financial disclosure forms under penalty of perjury;
yell lies big and small at the American people every day, sometimes 10 times a day (Trump seems to think that, if he says it loudly and often enough, he can get anyone to believe anything – no matter how demonstrably false. This would be laughable if he did not have unparalleled power to act out his delusions. Meanwhile, Ivanka whined in a tweet on Thursday about enemies “inventing facts” – to which one need only ask: Who’s your daddy, bitch?);
engage in all manner of norm-busting behavior, including lacing campaign rallies with profanities and reducing political debate to juvenile boasts and taunts; and
defy the constitutional provision which prohibits using his office to enrich himself.

There’s no denying that Trump betrayed his oath of office. Yet none of that matters in the alternative universe Fox News and the Republican Party are creating, where Trump can do no wrong. Only that explains ongoing schemes like this:

Trump and [his attorney general William] Barr have also been asking other foreign governments for help in investigating the FBI, CIA and Mueller investigators. …

And the information being requested has left allies astonished. One British official with knowledge of Barr’s wish-list presented to London commented that ‘it is like nothing we have come across before, they are basically asking, in quite robust terms, for help in doing a hatchet job on their own intelligence services.’

(The Independent, November 1, 2019)

I could go on, but you get the point, which raises this question:

If all of those high crimes and misdemeanors are okay, then what exactly is impeachable?

Reporters would provide a defining public service if they press every Republican relentlessly to answer it. Voters would do well to do the same.

Meanwhile, Republicans are staking what little remains of their political integrity on the fiction that the things Trump does are wrong but not impeachable. Mind you, many of them were among the crusaders who declared it an article of constitutional faith to impeach former President Bill Clinton. And all he did was lie about having sex with a White House intern.

Such is the hypocrisy afoot. Which is why the only thing that explains Republicans voting to impeach Clinton but not to impeach Trump is political tribalism.

Incidentally, white men compose nearly 90 percent of their caucus, which can only reinforce their tribalism. Sadly, Will Hurd, the token black member of their caucus, is as captive to norm-busting Trumpism as Clarence Thomas, the token black member of the Supreme Court, is to self-abnegating conservatism.

To be fair, though, this tribalism has become so determinative that, if Trump were a Democrat, every Democratic House member would have voted against this impeachment inquiry.

I decried this simmering phenomenon in “Tribalism and Dysfunction in American Politics,” June 24, 2018. Moreover, I fear the country will soon begin to rue normalizing the misconduct and hypocrisy Trump personifies.

But I cannot overstate that this normalization says far more about voters than politicians. I also cannot overstate that Trump is not causing this tribalism; he’s merely exploiting it.

Political tribalism is tearing America apart. And Trump’s presidency smacks of a demonic force designed to have Republicans and Democrats ape the Sunnis and Shias who have been fighting for the soul of Islam for over 1000 years.

(“Trump’s Insulting Tweet about Doug Jones, the Alabama Democratic Nominee, Reveals More about Trump,” The iPINIONS Journal, November 26, 2017)

Clearly, neither he nor Republican House members give a damn about the rule of law, democratic values, the lessons of history, or indeed how their tribalism will be recorded in history. This is the very definition of putting party above country.

Finally, apropos of learning the lessons of history, the most relevant in this case might not be the internecine battles between Sunnis and Shias for the soul of Islam. Because Republicans and Democrats need only look to the Civil War between Northerners and Southerners to see what this simmering tribalism portends.

The famous admonition former President Abraham Lincoln issued in this context is as relevant today as it was back then:

History conspired to have Lincoln as a president committed to keeping the country united. It has now conspired to have Trump as a president committed to tearing it apart. I cannot overstate that he often sounds more like a two-bit Mafia don enforcing a Republican oath of Omertà than a president trying to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.

Even worse, as Maya Angelou might’ve warned, Trump has shown us time and again that he regards anyone who does not support him, unconditionally, as un-American human scum. Imagine what danger an American president fomenting such us-against-them politics portends …

That said, anyone looking to the courts to guide us through this national nightmare is in for a rude awakening. Because I’ve been lamenting for years that judges (even on the Supreme Court) have devolved into little more than glorified hired guns for the respective political parties. (For example, I refer you to “Nomination of Neil Gorsuch to Supreme Court Affirms Politicization of Judiciary,” February 2, 2017.)

And so we continue Slouching Towards Gomorrah. Trump’s presidency might not prove the politics of no return. But the gaslighting of this “stable genius” is misleading the country down so many rabbit holes, it’s only a matter of time before it ends up in the abyss.

For example, he set the media all atwitter on Thursday by teasing plans to read the transcript of his incriminating call with Ukrainian President Zelensky. He even dared to emulate FDR by reading it on TV as a “fireside chat.” That should have been a red flag. But it’s self-evident that Trump will agree to testify under oath (i.e., never) before he agrees to read that transcript.

Unfortunately, Trump has far too many reporters and commentators trained like Pavlovian dogs. Only this explains why they never fail to chase his tweets and blather down rabbit holes. Hell, it didn’t even occur to them that, it being Halloween, his talk about a fireside chat might have been more trick than treat.

God help America.