The dam is breaking as House Republican slams Donald Trump over his China scandal

| 6:45 pm EDT October 4, 2019
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House Democrats already have enough votes to approve articles of impeachment against Donald Trump. The question continues to be just how ugly Donald Trump’s scandals will get for him, and how sharply pro-impeachment poll numbers will rise, by the time impeachment makes its way to the GOP Senate.

We’ve already seen a few Senate Republicans start to take public positions today on Donald Trump’s China scandal. Mitt Romney is now anti-Trump, John Cornyn is still pro-Trump, and Marco Rubio is as confused as ever. But take this all with a grain of salt, because it’ll still be awhile before the Senate ends up voting on impeachment, and they have to parse their words carefully in case the landscape changes before it’s their turn to vote. In the meantime, one good barometer to watch is how many House Republicans come out against Trump, because they’ll be voting on articles of impeachment rather soon.

That’s why it matters that House Republican Will Hurd came out swinging against Donald Trump today. Hurd said it was “terrible” that Trump tried to pressure China into helping him smear Joe Biden in the name of altering the outcome of the 2020 election. Hurd also said that recently released text messages in Trump’s Ukraine scandal are “damning.”

What this means is that Will Hurd is already publicly positioning himself to possibly vote in favor of the House articles of impeachment against Donald Trump. Of course he’s retiring anyway, but that’s something of the point. Hurd and other House Republicans have known for months that they would eventually have to vote on impeachment, and that they’d face 2020 reelection trouble no matter which way they voted. Many of them have recently announced they’re not running in 2020. That frees them up to vote however they want.

Again, the House Democrats already have enough votes to impeach Donald Trump on as many articles as they like. But if even a fairly small number of House Republicans come out loudly enough against Trump, and end up voting to impeach him when the time comes, it’ll help send a signal to Senate Republicans that their best bet at surviving their own reelection races is to convict Trump after all.