“One and God make a majority.”
— Frederick Douglass
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“an appalling abuse of public trust”
— Sen. Mitt Romney (R-UT) announcing his intent to vote Guilty for Trump on Article 1 of Impeachment
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“His [Mitt Romney] vote won’t change the outcome, but it’s striking how one man alone can dramatically change the mood, the tone, and the moral character of this final vote….”
— Charlie Sykes tweet, Bulwark founder, Wisconsin conservative author/pundit.
By Dan Peak
The Commoner Call (2/7/20)
At roughly 4:30 PM ET the US Senate acquitted Trump on two charges of impeachment.
The final vote on Article 1 was 52 Not Guilty to 48 Guilty. The final vote on Article 2 was 53 Not Guilty and 47 Guilty. Note the one vote difference between the two votes.
There was some drama – Sen. Mitt Romney (R-UT) announced and then voted in favor of being guilty for Article 1, “That Donald John Trump, President of the United States, is impeached for high crimes and misdemeanors…”
A Profile in Courage
Senator Mitt Romney’s decision to vote to convict President Donald Trump is an extraordinary act.
“Mitt Romney is doing something nearly unheard of these days: He’s putting his country above his party. He’s voting his conscience when doing so comes at a cost. He’s not rationalizing weakness and timidity by prettying them up as virtues. He will vote to convict President Donald Trump, in an act of extraordinary political courage.”
Romney said this of Trump’s guilt, “an appalling abuse of public trust”.
Compare Romney’s comments and votes to supposed ‘moderate’ Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME) who explained that Trump’s extortion of Ukraine was “improper” and “far from perfect”. Sounds serious, right?
After denouncing Trump, Collins offered her view of how she would vote, (the House didn’t meet the) “burden of showing that the president’s conduct, however flawed, warrants the extreme step of immediate removal from office.”
Romney said “flagrant”. Collins, in spite of being convinced by the House proof, denies the proof warrants removal.
But Collins did demand action from Trump, when asked about an apology, “I think that would be helpful. President Clinton did that in 1999. It took him a while, but, finally, he did apologize for his actions.“
Collins assures us that Trump has been chastened and will act properly going forward and we’ll all heal after he apologizes. Meanwhile Trump’s clown lawyer Rudy Giuliani is racking up air miles shuttling between D.C. and Ukraine to dig up dirt on former vice president Joe Biden, while Trump’s other lawyer US attorney general William Barr is accused by Giuliani’s indicted co-conspirator Lev Parnas as being ‘in the know’… and has Trump ever apologized for anything?
Republicans immediately attacked Romney to deliver on the purported ‘head on pike’ threat made by Trump and denied by a few Senators including Collins. Following Romney’s announcement, Donald Trump Jr. tweeted, (Romney) “should be expelled from the GOP”. The Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), a shit-show of over-the-top radical conservatism, disinvited Romney – ignoring the fact that Romney has not attended since 2013.
But there will be retribution – Party of Trump needs to make this painful, the ‘head on pike’ threat has to be seen as ‘real’.
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I will cite one more lone voice, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA). Following the debacle of the Iowa Democratic primary Warren was a lone voice calling for unity:
Daily Kos reported Warren’s tweet with this headline: One Very Persistent Woman: Elizabeth Warren ☼ We at Daily Kos support her.
With that I’ll end with this comic reminder of Trump impeachment lawyer Alan ‘Underwear Boy’ Dershowitz who earned the recognition for his ‘he did it for us, rather than to us’ justification of Trump, “…if a president does something which he believes will help him get elected in the public interest, that cannot be the kind of quid pro quo that results in impeachment.” So if listening to the comic comments of a ‘chastened’ Trump by the likes of Collins and Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-TN) isn’t funny enough, check out cartoonist Matt Bor’s take on it all.
There is an election to Win – if we can.