The point here is that President Trump has shown us he can’t be taught not to transgress the constitutional boundaries of his office exactly as often as he wishes. If two years of Russiagate headaches weren’t enough to get the president wise to the idea that siccing foreign nations on his political opponents is a gambit better left alone, you can bet a scolding from Nancy Pelosi won’t get the job done for next time, either. Trump does what he wants, and sometimes the things he wants to do are apparently high crimes and misdemeanors. If they don’t get him out now, who would put money on the possibility that he simply chooses on his own never to do those things again?
Of course, it’s true: Getting him out isn’t going to happen, not with Republicans in the Senate fully in Trump’s thrall. But the idea that there will be no price to pay for Republicans for stonewalling is remarkable. If you’d mapped this scenario out in advance to Republicans in 2016, they’d rightly see it as an absolute worst-case scenario for a Trump presidency: a case where the wrongdoing is clear-cut and intolerable, and every elected Republican is forced to choose between condoning the wrongdoing and bringing down the terrible wrath of the president on his own head.
Does that sound like a lay-up to you?
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