Republicans' "Cringing Shamelessness"

A sampling of opinion (excerpts) from newspapers this morning on Senate Republicans' dismantling of the Constitution and political norms, in the service of the most corrupt, authoritarian, unhinged president in our history. 

The Washington Post:

Americans who object to Mr. Trump’s relentless stonewalling and Republicans’ complicity can take some comfort in the prospect that most or all of the evidence the White House is hiding will eventually come out. A reminder of that came Friday in a New York Times report about Mr. Bolton’s unpublished book, which describes how Mr. Trump ordered him last May to tell Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to meet with his personal lawyer Rudolph W. Giuliani. Mr. Giuliani said publicly at the time he wanted to induce Mr. Zelensky to investigate Mr. Biden because it would be “helpful to my client,” Mr. Trump.

That report underlined the cringing shamefulness of the Republican decision to block Mr. Bolton’s testimony — and there will surely be more reminders in the weeks and months ahead. We can hope only that voters who wanted that evidence to be heard in the trial will respond by showing incumbent senators they are a force to be reckoned with, as much as the bully in the White House.

The New York Times:

Senate Republicans’ indifference to the overwhelming public support for calling witnesses was of a piece with the party’s minority politics. Its president lost the popular vote by three million votes. Its Senate majority represents 15 million fewer Americans than the Democrats’ minority. In states like North Carolina, it rigs the maps to turn popular-vote losses into legislative majorities, then strips power from duly elected Democratic leaders.

And just in case Americans want to register their unhappiness with Republican leadership, the G.O.P. passes laws across the country to make voting harder and discourage turnout. “I don’t want everybody to vote,” Paul Weyrich, a leader of the modern conservative movement, said in 1980. “Our leverage in the elections, quite candidly, goes up as the voting populace goes down.”

That is becoming the rightful slogan of today’s G.O.P. leaders, who are in thrall to a would-be autocrat, fearful of their own constituents, desperate to lock in control of the courts and the nation's legal system before a diversifying nation can pry their political authority away. [snip]

Make no mistake: The Senate may acquit Mr. Trump, but it will not, it cannot, exonerate him. Mr. Trump is the most corrupt president in modern times, a reality Americans will continue to be reminded of — by continuing investigations by the House, which should immediately issue a subpoena to Mr. Bolton; by a trio of cases in the Supreme Court that seek to reveal Mr. Trump’s shady finances; and, of course, by the behavior of the man himself.

Minneapolis Star Tribune:

Trump got a jump on his end zone dance on Thursday, when he told a Des Moines rally that it was “a happy period because we call it ‘impeachment light.’ ”

Sadly, he’s right. What former President James Buchanan apocryphally called “the world’s greatest deliberative body” didn’t bring the bodies to deliberate. Instead, House managers had to rely on previous testimonies — that is from those not blocked or intimidated by the White House.

“The question then is not whether the president did it, but whether the United States Senate or the American people should decide what to do about what he did,” [Republican Sen. Lamar] Alexander wrote in his statement, adding: “Let the people decide.”

And so they will render a verdict, in November — on the president and his Senate defenders, who failed to live up to Buchanan’s lamentably outdated description of their institution.

We hope that verdict can be rendered in November, but the events of the past 24 hours make it clear it will be a fight to make sure the election is free from interference and that the results will be accepted.  Now more than ever, we can't afford to take anything for granted.