Joe Conason: The Shame Of The Senate

https://www.nationalmemo.com/the-shame-of-the-senate/?fbclid=IwAR0RitQ1msJTQ8ImVWqG38r8OEiy_dSwshIr6DGB0Q02TpvUJwPa7xYh3e8

The Shame Of The Senate
Joe Conason January 24, 2020


Well before completing his first term, President Donald Trump firmly established himself as the worst president in American history, which should surprise nobody. What we have seen this week suggests that many of the senators now hearing his impeachment trial will join him in historic infamy.

From the very beginning of Trump’s impeachment, a majority of Republican senators have indicated that they would not dare to sanction his unmistakable wrongdoing.

The Republicans stood mutely as Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) told the nation that he would manage the trial in lockstep with the president’s lawyers. They said nothing when the president brushed aside the constitutional separation of powers and the prerogatives of Congress by withholding all evidence and witnesses. They pretended to believe McConnell when he promised to conduct the trial fairly, and apply the same standards and procedures seen during the impeachment of former President Bill Clinton.

And then, knowing that McConnell planned to railroad Trump’s acquittal, they falsely swore an oath to do “impartial justice.”

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Four years ago, Graham predicted that if Republicans were to nominate Donald Trump for president, their party “would be destroyed” and “would deserve it.” His defense of Trump, even knowing the crimes perpetrated by him, is destroying forever the reputation of Graham and every other Republican senator implicated in the cover-up. They could restore a semblance of probity by reversing course on subpoenas of witnesses and documents, but that seems unlikely.

Instead they are engraving the shame of the Senate, once the world’s greatest deliberative body, on their own souls.