It’s Unsurprising That McConnell Wants Impeachment.
There’s rumors he’s happy Democrats are moving forward with impeachment, and it actually makes sense when you think about it.
Following Trump’s calls for his supporters to come to Washington D.C. to protest the certification of the electoral college votes, rioters stormed the capitol in an event that resulted in multiple deaths and hours long standoffs with the police. Since then, House Democrats have vowed to move forward with a second impeachment if Vice President Pence didn’t invoke the 25th amendment as calls for Trump’s early removal from office unsurprisingly continue to intensify. While the events that took place on January 6th were a damning indictment of the palpable anger and the lengths that Trump’s base was willing to go in their futile efforts to ensure the President remains in office, an admittedly interesting aspect of all of this has been the even deeper division of the Republican party at the leadership level in the aftermath.
If nothing else, Donald Trump can certainly be credited with breaking the Republican party potentially beyond repair, with the base inarguably behind Trump himself, and the money — of course — falling behind none other than Senate Minority leader Mitch McConnell. Perhaps that’s why it isn’t exactly surprising that McConnell is reportedly in favor of the House of Representatives moving forward with impeachment.
Manu Raju, Phil Mattingly, Jeff Zeleny, Jim Acosta, and Kaitlan Collins with CNN report:
“Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has indicated that he believes that impeaching President Donald Trump will make it easier to get rid of the President and Trumpism from the Republican Party, according to a source with knowledge of the matter.
Another person with direct knowledge told CNN there’s a reason McConnell has been silent on impeachment as other Republicans have pushed back: he’s furious about last week’s attack on the US Capitol by the President’s supporters, even more so that Trump has shown no contrition. His silence has been deliberate as he leaves open the option of supporting impeachment.
McConnell has made no commitments on voting to convict Trump, and wants to see the article itself before voting. It’s a stark contrast to the President’s first impeachment when McConnell repeatedly spoke out against Democratic intentions to hold Trump accountable for a pressure campaign on the Ukrainian government to investigate Joe Biden and his family…”
If an impeachment were to be followed with a conviction in the Senate, President Trump would not be able to run again in 2024. While it seems likely that McConnell has been finished with the President for months, if not years, and particularly since he launched unexpected pressure on the GOP to pass $2000 survival checks, I can only assume that the January 6th riots made the thought of the President being unable to run again even more appealing to McConnell, and other likeminded establishment Republican lawmakers.
That said, at the end of the day this ultimately boils down to more typical, villainous behavior from a man who has been a plague on American politics since he took office decades ago.
It seems only fitting that after everything that has transpired, McConnell would be content to simply push Trump to the side, and sweep him under the rug as though none of this ever even occurred. After years of exploiting his popularity among the base, enabling him, and taking advantage of the useful tool he had at his disposal in order to get what he wanted from the President for his donors, of course McConnell would look forward to potentially tossing him to the side the moment he’s no longer an asset. Can we really be surprised that instead of acknowledging that the President is the culmination of years worth of the right wing stoking white nationalism, anger, fear of “the other”, and bleeding the masses dry with more tax cuts for the rich, McConnell would rather just put the whole thing behind him? It’s far more convenient, isn’t it, to pretend that the President himself is the problem, as opposed to merely a symptom of a broader issue that McConnell himself has played a vital role in creating?
Nevertheless, I’m sure he’ll receive more than enough high praise from his Democratic colleagues if he were to vote to convict. I don’t think he will, but it’s telling, if not even a bit funny, that he’s actually considering it. I guess it’s never pleasant when the monster you’ve helped to create comes back to bite you in the end.
