Earlier today, it was my position that impeachment should be brought against Trump even with the full knowledge that Senate Republicans wouldn't vote to convict and remove him from office. My argument was that it would put Republicans on the record showing that they don't care that the President is a criminal. I also argued that, essentially, not drafting articles of impeachment for that reason would be its own statement on our nation's values, and that that statement would be quite bad.
Well, perhaps two Republican Senators were reading my posts and thought, "Hey, why make Cardinal wait for impeachment before it gets to that? Let's go there
now."
https://twitter.com/mkraju/status/1072244175544963073
At this point it's not a significant step to go from saying, "I don't care if he committed Federal Crimes because look at the economy" to "I don't care if he illegally conspired with a hostile foreign state because look at [insert Conservative goal here]."
The fact that we've already reached the point that Republican Senators are comfortable going on the record stating that rule of law is irrelevant represents the most recent and dramatic deterioration in the foundation of our Democracy. As bad as the nation's dialogue is (not least to say the quality of dialogue here on DP right now), what follows once our debates have shifted from arguing that crimes happened to arguing
why crime is bad? If this kind of nihilism is successful in shaping the country's narrative, I won't be very optimistic about what happens next.
