Republican Senators Just Sold Out Democracy
By acquitting Trump, Republicans handed the president nearly unlimited power—and revealed the extent of their venality.
The Republican Party has acquitted President Donald Trump. That result was always the most likely outcome of the impeachment process. The inability of even 20 Republican senators to break free from the cult of Trump was widely assumed.
But it didn’t have to go down like this. In their desire to appease a president all of them know to be a serial malefactor, Republicans adopted wild and discredited legal theories of executive power and privilege. To acquit a president, they crowned a king.
We should not be shocked that they’ve done this. Republicans feel empowered to free the president from all constraints because they never intend to be subjected to a Democratic president armed with these new powers. Republicans think they’re on the cusp of locking in one-party control of the government. Their solution to the demographic changes that will soon see us become a majority-minority country is to forge a new theory of government, in which minority white rule can withstand the popular will.
All of the Republican strategies work to accomplish this. They suppress nonwhite voters and gerrymander districts. They protect and defend an Electoral College that functions to elevate the voting power of whites in low-population states over the will of popular majorities. And they have now explicitly authorized the president to use foreign influence to corrupt and steal elections, on the theory that the reelection of that president, by definition, is in the best interests of the nation. These are not the actions of a party trying to win political power; they’re the actions of a party trying to exclude anybody else from having it.
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Link: Republican Senators Just Sold Out Democracy
years has been huge. Dems could've had immigration and infrastructure deals. Instead they opted to go hard left, cozy up to the MSM, CIA, FBI and whatever loser Vindman-types they could find, and try to impeach the President. Now they lost and Trump will likely win in November. Truly astonishing power play that failed. Country hurt in the process.
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