Mission impossible?
Ostensibly, the House Impeachment Managers have an easy task: prove what we all know, that Donald Trump, while President, incited an insurrection against the U.S. Government, thus violating his oath of office. He did so in a vain attempt to remain in power against the will of the electorate and, thus, subvert the very Constitution he swore to preserve and protect. This is the most egregious impeachable offense one can imagine in our democratic republic.
Yet conventional wisdom is the Managers will not be able to persuade two-thirds of the Senate to agree, and thus, Trump will skate free. Again.
This is because the true mission of the Managers is not to prove their case, but to find 17 honorable Republicans in the Senate, who’ll listen to the evidence and consider it honestly, with the best interests of the country in mind, instead of their own cynical political calculations. This makes the Managers’ quest akin to that of Diogenes (ironically, the leader of the Cynics), who reputedly searched Athens with a candle/lamp in broad daylight looking in vain for an honest human. (In a further irony, Cynics in ancient Greece believed people should live in virtue and REJECT desires for power, wealth and fame. In contrast, cynical Republicans (e.g. Ted Cruz and Josh Hawley) SEEK power, wealth and fame and disdain virtue.
The Managers are likely to have no more luck than Diogenes, because 45 Republicans already voted to support Rand Paul’s assertion that the Impeachment Trial itself is unconstitutional, since Trump has already left office. And unfortunately, unlike Abraham, who bargained with God on how many righteous people must be found in Sodom for God to spare it (whittling it down from 50 to 10), there is no bargaining with finding 17 righteous Republican Senators, likely an impossible task.
