Trump's Texas Allies Just Can't Quite Figure Out How to Defend Him

Nobody knows how impeachment will play as a political matter in the long run, but something remarkable has happened in the last week. The president’s Republican defenders in Congress have started to look silly. That’s new. Silly is distinct from unserious, unwise, dishonest, or villainous. A politician may not want to be those things, but silly is worse. Often, people who lie or dissemble or feign ignorance do so from a position of strength—they know they can get away with it. But people who look foolish are rarely, if ever, strong.

In the past, it has been rare for any offense committed by the administration to last more than about 48 hours in the public consciousness. Like the diseases in Mr. Burns’ body, there have been so many scandals and outrages that they crowd each other out, preventing any one thing from holding attention for long. Even the revelation that the president paid hush money to a porn star he was cheating on his third wife with is barely remembered today, let alone, say, the time EPA administrator Scott Pruitt sent his bodyguards to drive around to collect Ritz-Carlton body lotions, or the time a rinky-dink company from Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke’s hometown that had two employees got a $300 million contract to rebuild Puerto Rico’s electrical grid.

This amnesia has protected GOP members of Congress. Evade questions about one crisis in the party, and eventually it will go away, soon to be replaced by another. Speaker Paul Ryan used to pretend he never watched the news. Others would literally run away from reporters. But this Ukraine thing isn’t going away, and Republicans are going to be asked about it a lot, into the indefinite future. Over the last week, as they have been repeatedly wrongfooted by the administration, it has become clear they have no idea what to say about it.

The first time congressional Republicans got spotlighted came last Tuesday, after House Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced that her caucus would take another step toward impeachment. Republicans in the Texas delegation leaped to the president’s defense with one particularly strong message: Pelosi had jumped the gun. Why not wait for the release of the transcript, which Trump had called “perfect,” and the complaint, which the White House said contained nothing of consequence?

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