The Case for Trump's Impeachment is Over-Determined
Where is divided government when you need it?
As Peter Suderman eloquently noted yesterday, Donald Trump has destroyed (what was left of) the credibility of the president's office. He is a
natural authoritarian whose first instinct is to stack the administration with mini-authoritarians who are so attracted to his draconian policies that they are willing to overlook his mental afflictions and pledge fealty. He's got his own little axis of evil going with:
- Jeff Sessions, who wants to double down on America's worst policy disasters of the 20th Century, the War on Drugs and the War on Immigration, helming the Justice Department
- Kris Kobach, the notorious immigration warrior who was the brains behind such liberty-busting policies as Arizona's "your paper's please" monstrosity, second in command of the Voting Rights Commission that Trump created through executive order to gin up Pravda-style propaganda against vote fraud, an issue that literally every study has shown exists only in the fevered imagination of Republicans
- Steve Bannon, the head of the fakest of fake news websites Breitbart and the grand-daddy of the alt-right, as a senior advisor.
This is all serious shit that ought to alarm libertarians. But it is not impeachable. However, Trump has done plenty in his first four months in office that is. In fact, I note in my column at The Week, one does not have to be a Democratic partisan to see that the case for impeachment against Trump is over-determined at this stage. Bill Clinton was (wrongly) impeached for far less.
So what's the difference? Trump has his own party occupying Capitol Hill and Clinton had to contend with Republicans. And Republicans can't (and actually shouldn't) ignore the base that digs this president. Had Democrats won Congress in November and we had divided government, it might have been a different story. Trump would have had to shape up (which does not seem possible for this paranoid man-child consumed with a sense of victimhood) or ship out.
Trump is so out of control because Republicans are in control in Congress, and that's a tragedy for this country.
Go here to read the piece.