There are two popular schools of thought when it comes to ousting Donald Trump, and they’re both wrong
Special Counsel Robert Mueller and his prosecutorial allies have formally hung two felonies around Donald Trump’s neck, and everyone paying close attention knows that they’re just the first of dozens if not hundreds of felony counts Trump will soon face. This means Trump’s presidency will go down in flames; it’s just a matter of when and how. The big debate is how the Republicans in Congress will handle this. Just about everyone has it wrong.
There are two popular schools of thought being expressed right now, both by pundits on television, and by observers on social media. The first is that the Republicans in Congress, because they’re mustache twirling villains and this is all a cartoon, will never ever ever abandon Trump no matter how bad this gets. The second is that if Trump’s crimes become ugly enough, the Republicans will suddenly grow a conscience and decide to do the right thing. These positions both represent a complete misunderstanding of how politics actually works.
The Republicans in Congress care first and foremost about getting reelected, which means trying to keep their donors and constituents as happy as possible. For the past two years, most of them have calculated that, while Donald Trump was a no-win scenario for them, the fallout would be less bad for them if they kept Trump in power. Was that a wise bet? Well, forty of them lost their seats in the House; we don’t know if that number would have been bigger or smaller if they had strategically ousted Trump beforehand.
But now things are very different. Donald Trump is no longer merely a historically unpopular and deranged thug with endless criminal scandals swirling around him. He’s now a guy who’s about to get lit up on a list of felony counts too long to recite. There’s about to be such a groundswell of national momentum for ousting him in early 2019, it’ll make Trump’s unpopularity of 2017 and 2018 look like a day at the beach.
So now the scheming Republicans in Congress are going to do what corrupt conservative political parties always do: they’re going to make a selfish calculation about whether ousting or not ousting Donald Trump is best for them. The ones who are specifically caught up in his criminal scandals may decide to ride him to the bottom. But the rest of the GOP is going to view Trump’s downfall as simply yet another corrupt business decision.
The Republican Congress at large isn’t suddenly going to grow a conscience; that’s not what corrupt conservative politicians do. But they’re not going to selflessly allow Donald Trump’s downfall to take them down as well, because that’s also not what corrupt conservative politicians do. If twenty GOP Senators go along with ousting Trump, it’ll be because they think it’s best for them, not for America. Yes, there’s a good chance it’ll happen as the felony counts pile up – but not for Pollyanna reasons.
