'Out on a limb': Inside the Republican reckoning over Trump's possible impeachment

[Miles Archer]

‘Out on a limb’: Inside the Republican reckoning over Trump’s possible impeachment

By Robert Costa and Philip Rucker

Oct. 6, 2019 at 8:00 a.m. EDT

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/out-on-a-limb-inside-the-republican-reckoning-over-trumps-possible-impeachment/2019/10/05/8e2b73c0-e6ef-11e9-b403-f738899982d2_story.html

A torrent of impeachment developments has triggered a reckoning in the Republican Party, paralyzing many of its officeholders as they weigh their political futures, legacies and, ultimately, their allegiance to a president who has held them captive.

President Trump’s efforts to pressure a foreign power to target a domestic political rival have driven his party into a bunker, with lawmakers bracing for an extended battle led by a general whose orders are often confusing and contradictory.

Should the House impeach Trump, his trial would be in the Senate, where the Republican majority would decide his fate. While GOP senators have engaged in hushed conversations about constitutional and moral considerations, their calculations at this point are almost entirely political.

Even as polling shows an uptick in support nationally for Trump’s impeachment, his command over the Republican base is uncontested, representing a stark warning to any official who dares to cross him.

[lindysalsagal]

1. This is sounding potentially promising:

Still, many more Republicans would have to join them to reach the two-thirds majority in the upper chamber required to convict the president and remove him from office.

“Nobody wants to be the zebra that strays from the pack and gets gobbled up by the lion,” a former senior administration official said in assessing the current consensus among Senate Republicans. “They have to hold hands and jump simultaneously … Then Trump is immediately no longer president and the power he can exert over them and the punishment he can inflict is, in the snap of a finger, almost completely erased.”

They should all watch Handmaid's Tale and get a secret resistance started. That's how to do it: Start with 2 or 3 who want to resist, and then as private conversations arise, recruit more. I'll bet after 6 it'll be a stampede. They've all been terrified for 3 years, now.

[Va Lefty]

2. Spineless sycophants

[underpants]

3. Really good article. Went back to '73 to find Mtch not being a tool.

Seriously can we get and Oxford comma?

Trump has been defiant in his defense, insisting his conduct with foreign leaders has been “perfect” and claiming a broad conspiracy by the Democratic Party, the intelligence community and the national media to remove him from office. Yet few Republican lawmakers have been willing to fully parrot White House talking points because they believe they lack credibility or fret they could be contradicted by new discoveries.