Articles of impeachment from the House would create extremely tough political calculations for Republican officeholders and candidates to grind through. Endangered Republican senators such as Cory Gardner of Colorado, Susan Collins of Maine and Martha McSally of Arizona would weigh two painful election-year options: one in which they struggle in their purple states to explain their vote to defend the president for doing the indefensible; or another where Vice President Pence leads the ticket but — despite the funereal wails of the president’s most fervent cultists — they can at least pivot to talking about the future and the dangers of the Democratic nominee. Other GOP senators, now retiring, would have to consider their legacies as they cast the most important vote of their long careers. Still others, who found the courage to criticize the president in the past, may find their voices once more.
Financial wizards have a wonderful term for the cold, bloodless business of discovering a given asset’s true value at a given moment; they call it “marking to market.” It’s a hardheaded calculation, for it reduces all things, regardless of sentimentality or nuance, to a clear valuation. In the wake of the president’s actions on Ukraine, the Republican Party and the officials who lead it must be brutally marked to market on the issue of Trump’s fitness for office.
This test would create an existential question for every Republican senator and representative: Why am I here? To serve my future or my country?
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