Day 338…
Three Republican Senators - Lindsay Graham of South Carolina, Ted Cruz of Arizona, and Mike Lee of Utah - met with the ex-President’s defense team yesterday.
Three Senators who are theoretically meant to be impartial jurors in the impeachment trial had a private meeting with the lawyers who are defending the President from the most serious charge ever leveled at a then-seated President.
The most shocking thing about that is how utterly unsurprising it is. During the last impeachment trial, the then Senate Majority Leader made no secret of the fact that he was coordinating the ex-President’s defense with the White House.
The rules for this kind of trial are not the same as a normal trial. These jurors can get up and leave in the middle of testimony which jurors in a criminal trial certainly can’t do.
Much like that first trial, it is extremely unlikely that anything that is presented by either side is really going to change the outcome. Behind closed doors, that decision has already been made.
The ex-President’s guilt or innocence in this particular instance is somewhat beside the point. The question is, how is the result going to impact the Republican party, itself. Does it remain in the thrall of the ex-President, or does it forge its way forward without him? Certainly, those three particular Senators do not think that this is even a question that needs to be asked.
On the other side of the coin, however, is another small handful of lawmakers who have made it clear that they want the party to move on beyond this man. The rest lie somewhere in the middle. Some who are happy to criticize the former-President in private, have been publicly towing the line and supporting him. This is their opportunity - do they take it or let it go by, probably forever.
On Friday, about 120 former GOP officials held a virtual meeting to talk about this very thing. Evan McMullin, who ran for President in 2016 and was one of the co-hosts of the call said, “Some people at the summit strongly favor starting a new party. They think the GOP is irredeemable. They understand how difficult it is to form a new party, but they understand that there is no other choice.”
Only about 40% of the people on the call, however, seemed to support a move like that, the rest, reportedly, felt that they could be more effective by encouraging a split from the former-President within the existing party.
Nikki Haley, the former Ambassador to the UN under the previous administration and a very vocal supporter of the ex-President in the past has now turned away from him. In an interview in Politico she said, “We need to acknowledge he let us down. He went down a path he shouldn't have, and we shouldn't have followed him, and we shouldn't have listened to him. And we can't let that ever happen again."
The Senate Minority Leader has said that he has not yet decided how he is going to vote which, at least publicly, sends a message to the party that need to remain open, but will they? It also allows him to get the lay of the land before he decides. His decision will have nothing whatsoever to do with whether the ex-President is guilty or innocent and everything to do with where the political winds are blowing.
The defense team is going to present their arguments today. They have already said that they are only going to use 3-4 hours of their allotted time. Each side has been given 16 hours of time, but they have decided to only use a quarter of it.
They don’t really need to defend anything. There is actually no defense possible against what happened. The only thing that they actually have to do today is provide the Senators who are going to vote against convicting the ex-President with some sort of hook, no matter how flimsy, that they can use as justification. I am sure that the three Senators who met with them yesterday have told them exactly what they need.
To say that the results of this trial are going to be a turning point does not begin to describe what its lasting effects are going to be.
We have just started watching ‘The Plot Against America’ which is a series that explores what would have happened had the United States not entered into the war in Europe. It centers on a Jewish family and what happens to them when the country elects an anti-Semitic and white supremacist aviation hero: Charles Lindbergh instead of Franklin Roosevelt.
Lindbergh, historically, thought that the US should remain neutral during the war and not get involved. While whether or not he actually supported the Nazis is a matter of conjecture, he, along with his friend industrialist Henry Ford, was an avowed anti-Semite and a white supremacist.
World War II brought the entire planet to a crossroad. Had it ended differently, and it very well could have, what would our lives look like today? I would say that I might be writing this in German, but I don’t know that I would be allowed to be writing anything like this at all.
It might be an exaggeration to say that this year will possibly be looked back on as being almost equally as pivotal, historically, but it might be.
Last month, we hit the point where more people had died as a result of COVID-19 than were killed in battle during all of World War II. Except for the attack on Pearl Harbor, World War II did not happen on American soil. Until last month, the US Capitol had never been breached by enemy combatants. Now, it has been. Our economy has been radically altered. Our national debt is now comparable to where it was after the War.
In much the same way that families huddled around their radios listening to news about the war back in the 1940’s, we have all been huddled around our televisions this year. The pandemic has kept us at home and therefore, the news has been much harder to avoid.
This past Presidential election was important. It wasn’t just that we were stuck at home, so we were paying more attention to it. It mattered. Having now seen what the ex-President was capable of doing, what would another four years have been like? If after everything that we lived through over these last few years, he had been re-elected, what would that have announced both to his base and to the rest of the world. What would that have said about us as a nation?
I guarantee you, that there will eventually be a multi-part television series that explores just that.
The results of this trial will be known in a couple of days and whatever happens next will begin to get underway. Either the base will be chastised, or they will be emboldened. It won’t really stop them either way, but the result of this trial either throws obstacles in their path or it clears the way for them.
While all of this has been going on, President Biden has been running the country. The most effective opposition to the populist movement is always going to be competent governance from the loyal opposition.
While this trial is, I believe, monumentally important, it is, also, in some way, beside the point. After it is over, maybe as early as this weekend, whatever the result, what needs to be done lies before us. We need to move forward.
We need to combat the pandemic.
We need to increase the supply of the vaccine and its distribution.
We need to tend to our economy.
We need to address racial inequality and work towards righting the wrongs perpetrated against our own citizens since our country began.
We need to protect our planet and its resources.
And those are just some of the starred items on a much longer list.
It should be of some comfort that, rather than becoming embroiled in the drama inside the Senate chamber, that our new President is hard at work trying to check things off of that list. There are battles to be fought beyond this particular one. Important ones.
We have new leadership in the White House. How successful that leadership ends up being will become apparent with time. Whether there are any answers coming our way, we should at least take comfort from the fact that the right questions are finally starting to be asked.
That’s our way forward.
Let’s fix this.
yup,you nailed it again!
💞I’m focusing on an American Holiday called Valentine’s Day
This has all become too much for me
need to focus on LOVE for a day or so or maybe so many more days.
I know, I’m a dreamer 💕💞🎈