October 9, 2019

The Senate GOP’s No-Win Scenario

“I’ve seen this movie before — with Brett Kavanaugh. More and more doesn’t mean better or reliable.”

In response to news reports over the weekend that at least one additional administration whistleblower has come forward to say what he or she knows about President Trump’s Ukrainian schemes, South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham tweeted, “I’ve seen this movie before — with Brett Kavanaugh. More and more doesn’t mean better or reliable.”

Graham’s raw political spinning has a fatal flaw.

Graham wants to tar the whistleblowers as part of a partisan campaign. But their motivation is largely irrelevant now because the bulk of the allegations have already been corroborated by the rough phone call transcript released by the White House and by the statements of the president and his aides. So while it’s still possible that the whistleblowers are part of some elaborate Democratic or “deep state” plot to take down the president, the plotters are using truthful information to do the deed. Graham surely knows this but is opting to pretend that there’s no there there.

The most charitable view of Graham’s sycophancy is that the president has put him and GOP senators in general in a no-win predicament.

The political hell most Senate Republicans have found themselves in since 2016 can be described as the chasm between how Trump wants them to behave and how they believe they should govern. Virtually none of these senators can get re-elected without the third of Republicans who adore Trump, but the vulnerable ones need more than just the Trumpers to get across the finish line. This means they have to attract less single-minded voters who are often more Trump-skeptical — mostly suburban, college-educated Republicans and Republican-leaning independents. But because the president and his most ardent fans will not brook any criticism of the president, the senators have been left trying to thread a very narrow needle: Differentiate yourself from Donald Trump while not actually criticizing Donald Trump.

The impeachment drama is shrinking the needle’s eye even more, and from both sides.

On one side is the president. For instance, going by published reporting, my own conversations with senators and Senate staffers, as well as straightforward common sense (as opposed to the fantasy reasoning one finds in some corners of cable news and Twitter), I can tell you with a high degree of confidence that virtually no GOP senator agrees with the president that his July 25 phone conversation with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy was, as Trump likes to say, “perfect.” Beyond that, opinions differ, but it’s a safe bet that most Senate Republicans think the conversation could have gone better and would dearly love for the president to say so.

Past presidents in the crosshairs of scandal have resorted to apologizing. Ronald Reagan admitted that “mistakes were made” after he stumbled on the facts during the Iran-Contra scandal. Bill Clinton initially denied everything, then told the nation, “I have sinned” and asked for forgiveness for the conduct that led to his impeachment.

Trump is determined to go another way and to punish those who disagree, as he has already tried to do with Utah Sen. Mitt Romney. That’s why Graham, Iowa Sen. Joni Ernst and Florida Sen. Marco Rubio find it necessary to hide behind various parsing rationalizations. Rubio’s response to Trump’s calling on the Chinese to investigate Joe Biden is now the official safe harbor for Republicans: He didn’t really mean it, he’s just trolling the press. Ernst says, in effect, that criticizing the president won’t change his behavior, so why bother?

Meanwhile, the Democrats have bungled the impeachment issue. House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff, in particular, has never missed an opportunity to burn any credibility he might have as a sober and honest investigator. Democratic partisans may like his red-meat rhetoric, but they lose sight of the fact that trolling Trump just makes the president’s job easier. Schiff’s entirely fictional account of Trump’s conversation with the Ukrainian president, read into the congressional record, may have infuriated the president, but it also gave Trump a talking point and an excuse for Republicans to hide behind the unfairness of the process.

If impeachment is going to be anything other than a partisan protest immediately swatted down by the GOP-controlled Senate, Democrats need to carefully and methodically make their case through serious fact-finding — an investigation that not only persuades at least 20 Republican senators but also a sufficient number of the voters those senators need to stay in office.

Short of that, the safer path will be for Republicans to continue to pretend everything is “perfect.”

(Jonah Goldberg is editor-in-chief of The Dispatch and the host of The Remnant podcast. His Twitter handle is @JonahDispatch.)

© 2019 TRIBUNE CONTENT AGENCY, LLC

Who We Are

The Patriot Post is a highly acclaimed weekday digest of news analysis, policy and opinion written from the heartland — as opposed to the MSM’s ubiquitous Beltway echo chambers — for grassroots leaders nationwide. More

What We Offer

On the Web

We provide solid conservative perspective on the most important issues, including analysis, opinion columns, headline summaries, memes, cartoons and much more.

Via Email

Choose our full-length Digest or our quick-reading Snapshot for a summary of important news. We also offer Cartoons & Memes on Monday and Alexander’s column on Wednesday.

Our Mission

The Patriot Post is steadfast in our mission to extend the endowment of Liberty to the next generation by advocating for individual rights and responsibilities, supporting the restoration of constitutional limits on government and the judiciary, and promoting free enterprise, national defense and traditional American values. We are a rock-solid conservative touchstone for the expanding ranks of grassroots Americans Patriots from all walks of life. Our mission and operation budgets are not financed by any political or special interest groups, and to protect our editorial integrity, we accept no advertising. We are sustained solely by you. Please support The Patriot Fund today!


The Patriot Post and Patriot Foundation Trust, in keeping with our Military Mission of Service to our uniformed service members and veterans, are proud to support and promote the National Medal of Honor Heritage Center, the Congressional Medal of Honor Society, both the Honoring the Sacrifice and Warrior Freedom Service Dogs aiding wounded veterans, the National Veterans Entrepreneurship Program, the Folds of Honor outreach, and Officer Christian Fellowship, the Air University Foundation, and Naval War College Foundation, and the Naval Aviation Museum Foundation. "Greater love has no one than this, to lay down one's life for his friends." (John 15:13)

★ PUBLIUS ★

“Our cause is noble; it is the cause of mankind!” —George Washington

Please join us in prayer for our nation — that righteous leaders would rise and prevail and we would be united as Americans. Pray also for the protection of our Military Patriots, Veterans, First Responders, and their families. Please lift up your Patriot team and our mission to support and defend our Republic's Founding Principle of Liberty, that the fires of freedom would be ignited in the hearts and minds of our countrymen.

The Patriot Post is protected speech, as enumerated in the First Amendment and enforced by the Second Amendment of the Constitution of the United States of America, in accordance with the endowed and unalienable Rights of All Mankind.

Copyright © 2024 The Patriot Post. All Rights Reserved.

The Patriot Post does not support Internet Explorer. We recommend installing the latest version of Microsoft Edge, Mozilla Firefox, or Google Chrome.