The timetable is fixed. Tonight at 19.30, time of the East Coast, the House will meet to vote on the measure of removal of Donald Trump from the White House through the 25th amendment. On Wednesday morning, the deputies will return to the chamber to comment on the request for impeachment. The text will then pass to the Senate, who will hold the trial of Trump – chaired by the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court John Roberts – probably starting from January 19th. Times, as you can see, are very tight. January 20 Joe Biden he swears as president and is therefore certain that the Senate trial will coincide with the first days, perhaps the first weeks, of his administration. A hypothesis that Biden does not like at all.
THE NEXT STEPS AND THE SPLIT BETWEEN THE DEMOCRATS – Nancy Pelosi e Chuck Schumer they said early on that Trump must be removed from the White House, but they also tried to have him resigned through the use of the 25th Amendment (which contains a clause that the vice president and cabinet members can remove the president in the event of exceptional circumstances). So far the attempt has not been successful and will not succeed in the next few hours either. Last evening Mike Pence and Trump first met afterwards the attack on Congress (in which supporters of the president yelled “impiccate Pence!”) and it seems that, without enthusiasm, they have managed to re-establish a climate that is at least collaborative.
The vote in the Chamber tonight is therefore above all formal. The Democrats, who are the majority, will once again ask Pence to step in and remove Trump. Pence will not do so and therefore we will move on to tomorrow’s vote on impeachment (the second for Trump, another negative record). Under normal circumstances, as was the case at the time of the first impeachment, the Justice Commission listens to witnesses, collects evidence and then sends it to the Chamber for a vote. At the time of the first impeachment, this phase took nearly three months. Everything is different now. No witnesses, no collection of evidence, one and only vote on the text of the indictment (a simple majority is enough) which will then end up in the Senate for the actual trial.
At this point the first problems begin for the Democrats. The Senate is practically closed until the inauguration. The process will therefore inevitably coincide with Joe Biden’s first moves, in particular with the vote on the appointments of his administration. And here Biden has shown he doesn’t like it. On the one hand, he said publicly that “this president shouldn’t be in the White House. Point”. On the other, privately, he expressed all his opposition to starting the mandate, in the midst of pandemic e economic crisis, with yet another media-political circus unleashed by / on Donald Trump. The problem is that large sections of his party, especially the left, want a trial, they want impeachment. It will therefore be up to Nancy Pelosi, once again, to put together a party whose souls often seem to be in profound disagreement.
Note in the margin. The chances of Trump being sentenced in the Senate are nil. To do this, it would take i two thirds of the senators. And even if some Republicans are willing to vote against Trump, that majority isn’t there.
WHAT THE REPUBLICANS WILL DO – The last few weeks have left the Republican party in a state of profound crisis. Cyclone Trump struck the Grand Old Party, divided it, weakened it, ultimately deeply damaged it. It is no mystery that Mitch McConnell, the Republican leader of the Senate, holds Trump responsible for the double defeat in Georgia, and therefore for the loss of the majority in the Senate. In recent weeks, more and more Republicans have explicitly distanced themselves from their president. Pat Toomey, senator of the Pennsylvania who also in 2020 supported Trump’s re-election, now says: “He has fallen to a level of madness, which was unthinkable until some time ago.” Toomey is now calling for Trump to step down.
The problem is, however, where were Toomey, a moderate Republican, and all the others when, well before the election, the president spread conspiracy theories, explicitly said that he would not accept the result of the election in case he lost and called his “patriots “To sensational actions to defend the alleged legality of the vote. “People took him at his word. I never thought I’d see such a thing, ”he said Mick Mulvaney, ex chief of staff Trump and now special envoy for Northern Ireland following the attack on Congress last week. The joke reveals the amazement of a large part of the party, which has been playing with Trump ‘fire’ for too long and is now surprised because that fire has turned into a fire.
The fact is that the Republican party, with very few exceptions (Mitt Romney first and in part the senators Susan Collins e Lisa Murkowski), in the end he supported Trump without too many hesitations: out of political convenience, out of fear, largely also out of ideological consonance. Just consider the case of three prominent senators – Rand Paul, Lindsay Graham, Ted Cruz – who during the 2016 electoral campaign said that Trump was “a clown”, “a pathological liar”, “a threat to democracy”, and who in recent years have instead supported whatever Trump has done and said, dismissing them as fantasies from liberal the accusations al tycoon of authoritarianism and threat to democracy.
Mitch McConnell, who now blames Trump for defeat in Georgia, also waited weeks before acknowledging Joe Biden’s victory. In those weeks, Trump sowed the virus of suspicion, undermined trust in the vote and in the institutions, and in the end asked his followers to “march” on Congress. On McConnell, as on many others in his party, a mixture of political convenience and of fear. Political convenience is the one for which the Republicans, in recent years, have received from Trump everything they have asked for and hoped for: come on tax cuts to hundreds of appointments of Conservative federal judges. Fear is instead the feeling that many Republicans have felt at the very thought of publicly contradicting Trump, of denouncing his behavior. Those who did, in fact, often found themselves managing a river of abuse – and the very likely loss of the support of the Make America Great Again.
However, in all likelihood, it is not just about political expediency and fear. The Republican party has changed, the old moderate world has disappeared or, by now, vote democratic and eventually the political axis of the GOP has shifted more and more to the right. On Wednesday, when Congress reassembled after Trump’s “troops” attack, nearly 150 deputies and senators still found reasons to question the election result. And if now the president is held somewhat by everyone responsible for inciting the riot, just remember the photo in which the senator from Missouri is seen, Josh Hawley, one of Trump’s most persistent and crafty allies, show his clenched fist to demonstrators. In other words: many of those who have publicly supported Trump in recent years have not done so out of fear or interest. They did it because they really believed it.
In the end, the GOP’s Faustian pact with Donald Trump certainly worked (for decades conservative judges will influence American society with their rulings) but it has also shown all its limitations. Above all one: the absolute lack of rhetorical and political restraints on Trump’s part it has gone too far, it has gone as far as a good part of the nation fails and does not want to follow him. And then the distancing began. The first, more or less courageous, complaints emerged. There were the first Republicans who declared their support for impeachment. When Nancy Pelosi asked for the first impeachment 13 months ago, there was not a single Republican deputy who voted in favor. This time there may be several. Between these Adam Kinzinger, a lawmaker from Illinois, and more Peter Meijer, Republican of Michigan, and possibly the same Liz Cheney, among the party leaders in the House. Eyes on other moderates too: John Katki, Fred Upton, Brian Fitzpatrick. Even in the Senate, some Republicans will vote for Trump’s impeachment. Again Mitt Romney, and then Lisa Murkowski (who also thinks about leaving the party), and then Ben Sasse, Susan Collins e Pat Toomey.
Regardless of who and how will vote on impeachment (which as we have seen remains a very, very distant eventuality), the real difficulties will begin for the Republicans after Donald Trump leaves the White House. Because we will have to reflect on the mistakes made. We will need to rebuild a coalition beyond appealing to the more conservative world (which, as we have seen, no longer works even in states like Georgia). Above all, it will be necessary to understand what to do with Donald Trump’s legacy.
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