A question for republicans;
At what point do you jump ship or do go all the way down with it?
Okay, I am UK and have no or little dog in this fight but I have watched US politics for many years.
I can see why so many US voters chose Trump over Hillary. But that was then and this is now. In the meantime, a succession of unprecedented indictments, convictions, scandals, and incompetence has followed. Till we get to the present situation where he has been impeached and the only thing that is keeping him in the office is the partisan nature of the senate.
Can we please first dispense with all the fake news, elite swamp conspiracy rubbish. I get that this is the party line but come on. Does it not all sound like the guy you avoid. You know how everything is all someone else's fault. You would not take it from the left and would not blame you. So let us credit each other with some intelligence here.
Trump famously said that he could shoot someone in Times Square and still get elected. Alright, that was relatively true about his popularity at the time but what does that say about his followers? Can such a level of support be healthy in any situation?
Okay, let us go back to 1972. Nixon was totally backed up by the GOP until the evidence showed that he was guilty. The facts are that they were open to a change of heart. Let us also remember that he had just won the recent election by the biggest margin ever. So popularity was not the big question. What swayed them was it was the right thing to do. Let us also look at how things turned out. Nixon had to resign. Ford took over and you had to suffer the ignominy of an unelected president. Then Carter got in, to be fair to both sides, nice but incompetent. But that left the way open for Regan. The undoubted poster boy of the GOP for decades. The fact is you were still trusted enough for him to stand a chance. Can you imagine if the GOP had supported Nixon the way that it is now supporting Trump?
I work in construction and everyone at some point that does this kind of work will at some time have to deal with a cock-up. Someone had misread the plans, had a hangover or was just plain stupid. The difference is how you deal with these occasions. If you deafly insist that bathrooms are a suitable place for the electric cupboard? You are not going to get much repeat work. If you take the hit and sort it out then you might?
The impeachment trial will, of course, go in Trump's favor. That is not in question. The question is how much will the rep senators chauvinistic sycophancy destroy their credibility.