Another House Republican comes out in favor of impeachment inquiry into Donald Trump
In a sign that House Republicans truly are worried that Donald Trump is going down for his Ukraine scandal, and that the fallout might land on their heads, earlier today a GOP Congressman announced that he agrees with the House’s decision to investigate Trump for it. Now, in what could be a trend, a second GOP Congressman is doing the same.
It’s not that Republican Congressmen James Comer and Mark Amodei want Donald Trump to be impeached. For partisan reasons, no one wants to have to impeach a president from their own party. But these two guys have apparently concluded that this Trump whistleblower scandal is so ugly, and has such a strong chance of taking Trump down, they have to speak up in favor of the impeachment inquiry in order to protect their own backsides.
Every House Republican, and several Senate Republicans, will have to run for reelection in 2020. If Donald Trump’s whistleblower scandal gets so ugly that voters end up looking to punish everyone associated with Trump, Republicans like Comer and Amodei will be able to point back to their early support for the inquiry as evidence that they were on the right side of it.
Even though these House Republicans may be doing this for the wrong reasons, it’s nonetheless useful to the House Democrats. It means Nancy Pelosi can paint the impeachment inquiry as at least nominally bipartisan, thus helping to push back against the Trump regime’s assertion that this is a partisan witch hunt. It’ll be worth keeping an eye on Republican House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy. If his own people keep speaking up in favor of the inquiry, it’ll become difficult for him to keep siding with Trump on the matter.
