All too predictably, Senator Elizabeth Warren is leading the impeachment charge. She says that
"The Mueller report lays out facts showing that a hostile foreign government attacked our 2016 election to help Donald Trump and Donald Trump welcomed that help. Once elected, Donald Trump obstructed the investigation into that attack," the 2020 Democratic presidential candidate wrote on Twitter. "Mueller put the next step in the hands of Congress: 'Congress has authority to prohibit a President's corrupt use of his authority in order to protect the integrity of the administration of justice.' The correct process for exercising that authority is impeachment."
Bad idea. Congress shouldn’t initiate impeachment. The Republicans in Congress should do it.
Impeachment is unlikely to succeed anyway, and it’s doomed if it becomes just a partisan issue. Warren’s good intentions are exactly what the Republicans need to dismiss the effort as just that. She’s their perfect target, the martinet from Massachusetts, the Pocahontas they love to slur at rallies. Her leadership on this hands them the target they love to use.
All of which isn’t the point.
The crisis is real, legal, and of the deepest gravitas. The Republicans must be forced to acknowledge that Donald Trump’s conduct in office merits no support from either party, and that trial by impeachment is warranted. Going further, the GOP must be forced to take a side, and choose between Donald Trump and their oaths to the Constitution.
They can’t choose both. Make the GOP say what side they’re on. The hand-wringing from the likes of Mitt Romney and feeble disdain from the GOP aren’t any absolution. It can’t stop there. The entire Republican Party has to tell the American people if they’re a party of laws or a cult of personality.
The Democrats should investigate every last grimy corner of Trump’s life and career. They ought to subpoena every witness and demand every document and grind down hard on every lie he’s ever told. The evidence will only stack up and the case will only get better. But every speech from the Democrats needs to hammer this so deep that the Republicans can’t talk it away. Impeachment should start from and by the Republicans. Make them say it. If they won’t, ask again: Trump or the law? Keep asking.
If they have any character left, make them defend it. If not, make them admit it. And make the GOP show every voter in the country exactly who they are.