Republicans In Congress Are Now Tearing At The Fabric Of The Constitution And Undermining Congress As An Institution Every Bit As Much As Trump

The New Yorker's Susan Glaser interviewed Adam Schiff on Thursday. She asked him if he hates Señor T. "No," he replied, "but I do hate what he is doing to the country." Glaser only had a few minutes and as Schiff was being called away she asked him what had been the most memorable testimony of the hearings, a "cancer on the presidency" moment like John Dean's Watergate testimony.

Schiff said, “sometimes it’s not the big things” but smaller, revealing comments that resonated. One was from the former special envoy to Ukraine, Kurt Volker, who, in a conversation with one of Zelensky’s advisers, in September, urged the new Ukrainian administration not to enact victor’s justice and investigate his defeated predecessor. The Zelensky adviser responded, in effect, “Oh, you mean like you want us to do with the Bidens and the Clintons?” To Schiff, it was a moment “pointing out the utter hypocrisy” of Trump’s scheme, in which America was now “urging other countries not to engage in politically motivated investigations, while asking for politically motivated investigations.”

The other conversation that Schiff cited was Sondland’s memorable encounter with David Holmes, a diplomat in the U.S. Embassy in Kyiv. Holmes overheard Sondland talking on the phone with Trump, who asked if Zelensky would pursue the investigations he wanted. After the call, Holmes asked Sondland, “Does the President give a shit about Ukraine?” As Holmes testified, the answer was no, he only cares about “the big stuff.” Well, Holmes pointed out, there is big stuff happening in Ukraine, like a war with Russia, but Sondland said no, that was not what he meant. Trump only cared about matters that concerned him, like the investigations. “That says it all,” Schiff told me. “The President doesn’t give a shit about what’s good for our country, what’s good for Ukraine. It’s all about what’s in it for him personally and for his reëlection campaign.” In that small moment in an obscure diplomat’s testimony, Schiff reflected, was the impeachment case in all its brazen simplicity. “That is a perfect summary,” he said, “of this whole scheme.”

Until recently, Michigan libertarian Justin Amash was a conservative Republican. Now he's a conservative independent caucusing with their party. He told CNN yesterday that he wants to hear all the evidence before making a final decision on impeachment but, as of noe, he is ready to vote for three articles of impeachment: obstruction of Congress, obstruction of justice and abuse of power. That doesn't count as "bipartisan."

Yesterday Vox published a chat reporter Sean Illing had with former Republican Congressman David Jolly (FL) about what's happened to his party. "Republicans in Congress," Jolly said, are now "tearing at the fabric of the Constitution every bit as much as Donald Trump" and "undermining the institution of Congress every bit as much as Trump... I think we just have to recognize how culturally broken our politics is. There is real animosity between the two sides that gets reinforced due to gerrymandered districts that insulate members from accountability, and we have a media environment that funnels partisan news to target audiences."

When Illing asked him when his former colleagues still in Congress say to him in private, Jolly said "I can’t tell you how many Republican members of Congress have told me, 'I’m just trying to keep my head down and not get noticed.' They see all the excitement stirred up by people like Jim Jordan and Devin Nunes but at least half the caucus wants to stay the hell out of the media. They’re not looking to make a name through this, they’re looking to survive this. I struggle with whether some of their behaviors are an intentional decision on their part to engage in either misdirection, or to overlook the facts because they have a fealty to the president or because they want to put a stake in the ground in right-wing media or because it just works in their districts. Or are some of them just duped into it by following the leader? I honestly don’t know. It’s probably a mix of all of the above."

Asked why not even a Republican who seems normal, like Will Hurd, is willing to vote to impeach Trump, Jolly's response was what you'd expect: "It’s hard to get into someone else’s mind. I was surprised that we haven’t seen Hurd or someone like Hurd lead the narrative, 'It’s wrong, but not impeachable.' His closing comments in the hearing a couple weeks conflated the 'wrong, but not impeachable' argument with the claim that the allegations against Trump aren’t proven. That’s different. I don’t know if Hurd has future political ambitions, but his legacy is being cemented now. If you say it was wrong but not impeachable, that’s a legitimate national conversation. You can run for office in the future and that argument could stand the test of time because it at least acknowledges what most of the country knows, namely that what Trump did is obvious and wrong. But if you stay with not proven, it’s as though Republicans have decided to simply overlook the truth and look the other way and that’s where I think it will have long-term consequences for Hurd and for the party at large.

Jolly said watching Elise Stefanik, who has carefully crafted an image as a moderate but has no turned into a raving Trumpist imbecile, "has been interesting. And I think she’s doing this very intentionally. When she said to Fiona Hill, for example, or whoever it was, 'Can’t a president fire an ambassador for any reason?' And Hill says, 'Yes,' and Stefanik says, 'A-ha,' then she goes to her press guy and says, 'I’m glad we all agree the president has the authority to do it.' Well, it overlooks the fact that the corrupt conspiracy behind it could still be impeachable. And she knows that. Of course she knows that. And when Gym Jordan (R-OH) says, 'We don’t know the whistleblower’s identity,' well, it doesn’t matter because we have the testimony of everybody else and he knows that. This is where I can’ tell if this is just intentional misdirection or a case of blindly following the leader... I think this is what the party is. I don’t think we will see a reversal the day Trump leaves office. I’m curious who follows Trump because the politics aren’t going to change so dramatically. I don’t think it’s Mike Pence’s party when Trump’s gone. Anyone who wants to win in this party will have to appease the Trumpist base one way or the other. And this whole impeachment saga is showing us that it’s not just Trump and Trumpism, it’s also Congress. I mean, Republicans in Congress right now are tearing at the fabric of the Constitution every bit as much as Donald Trump’s actions, because this is now their responsibility. It’s not their responsibility to defend Trump, but that’s what they’re prioritizing. And they’re undermining the institution of Congress every bit as much as Trump... I think the Lindsey Graham we’re seeing today is the real Lindsey Graham. This is a political opportunist who will flop with the winds and do whatever it takes to serve his own self-interest. That’s who he is... Trump has exposed a lot about who we are as a country and who Republicans are as a party. But the partisanship problem is less about the people in the party and more about the structural forces driving hyper-partisan decision-making. The big three for me are gerrymandering, closed primaries, and big money. All of this puts so much pressure on people to conform or compromise. If we unrigged the system, if we had competitive districts with open primaries and public financing, you’d see people behaving very differently because there would be a completely different reward structure. Right now the only way to get reelected is to act like a hyper-partisan. As long as that’s the case, we won’t get value-driven decision-making."

So... which candidate do Democratic primary voters thing would be best to take on and rid the country of Trump? A new Ipsos poll for Reuters shows the horse-race looking like this:

• Status Quo Joe- 26%
• Bernie- 19%

• Elizabeth- 13%
• Mayo- 8%
• Bloomberg- 5%
• Yang- 3%
• Klobuchar- 2%
• Booker- 2%

But that isn't what I found most valuable in the polling. Let's look, instead, how Democratic primary voters responded when asked about which candidate who best handle the most important issues of the day:

• Immigration

• Bernie- 25%
• Status Quo Joe- 22%
• Elizabeth- 12%
• Mayo- 7%
• Booker- 5%

• Healthcare

• Bernie- 33%
• Status Quo Joe- 21%
• Elizabeth- 15%
• Mayo- 7% • Booker- 3%

• The environment

• Bernie- 25%
• Status Quo Joe- 17%
• Elizabeth- 15%
• Mayo- 10%
• Booker- 4%

• The economy and jobs

• Status Quo Joe- 25%
• Bernie- 24%
• Elizabeth- 16%
• Mayo- 8%
• Booker- 4%