Impeachment won't work. The 25th Amendment won't, either. But the GOP can save the nation by saving itself.
If the near future is to include an American two-party system anything close to what we’ve experienced for more than a century, the Republican Party leadership must act quickly to remove its leader.
It’s unlikely anything else will get the GOP, and the nation, out of the fix they’re in. The Republican Party needs to get moving right now to have a decent chance of health.
Several Republican Congresscreatures abandoned the President within hours of the Donald Trump administration horror show peaking with an awful and fantastic insurrection at the Capitol. But they have only retreated when the situation requires rehabilitation. They cannot escape the fact that they have fostered his attempt to overturn the election he very plainly lost, and that they have securely linked themselves to everything that he has done to subvert democracy in their country.
In order to save their phoney-baloney jobs, and every Republican seat of the future, they must completely separate themselves from the mentally-disturbed would-be dictator, then seek amends and reformation. Otherwise, the GOP will have a hard time competing with even the most lame Democratic opponents.
The theory that Republicans can best move forward by appealing to the Trump base went out the window when camouflaged cretins went in the windows of the U.S. Capitol building.
And now, we’re stuck with an obviously unfit and unstable man in the Oval Office.
Republican Senators Barry Goldwater and Hugh Scott visited President Richard Nixon in 1974 to tell him that if and when bills of impeachment were delivered to the Senate, there would not be enough GOP votes there to prevent his conviction.
Such a visit should take place now. The message would be different.
Another impeachment of Trump is called for, but would only serve to paralyze what is already a dysfunctional government.
Forcing the President to step aside through the 25th Amendment, making the vice-president the acting president for four days, requires not only the assent of Mike Pence but of the "majority of either the principal officers of the executive departments or of such other body as Congress may by law provide.” There is significant apparatus that would allow Trump to resist an extension of his unpowered status beyond the four days, which would drive the action to Congress, where a two-thirds vote of each chamber would be required.
The vote would not be a slam dunk. Removal isn’t predicated on immoral acts but on incapacity, and that's hard to prove.
Instead of trying to employ the amendment, members of the GOP leadership should warn Trump about his future. They should tell him to resign so Pence can pardon him.
A plethora of possible federal charges that he’ll likely be faced with upon leaving office have burgeoned. Now he may face incitement to riot and conspiracy to overthrow the government.
Trump has governed through fear, and now he must be forced to flee in fear.
The Republicans have the existence of their unfortunate, ever-more-ugly party at stake. The nation has to worry about the possibility of years of veritable one-party government and whatever abominable actions Trump might take before Jan. 20.
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Spot on, Irv.