Benjamin Wittes produces an analysis of the reasoning capabilities of the Republicans which is hardly complimentary, starting with Senator Murkowski (R-AK):
The answer is quite nonsensical. Here’s how Sen. Lisa Murkowski put it in her statement explaining her opposition to witnesses:
The House chose to send articles of impeachment that are rushed and flawed. I carefully considered the need for additional witnesses and documents, to cure the shortcomings of its process, but ultimately decided that I will vote against considering motions to subpoena.
Given the partisan nature of this impeachment from the very beginning and throughout, I have come to the conclusion that there will be no fair trial in the Senate. I don’t believe the continuation of this process will change anything. It is sad for me to admit that, as an institution, the Congress has failed.
Pause a moment over the senator’s logic. She seems to be saying that because the House’s product was hasty and deficient and partisan, the Senate should punish the body by proceeding in a fashion that is hastier, more deficient, and every bit as partisan. She will vote to prevent the Senate from hearing evidence, to blind herself to information relevant to her own obligation to decide the president’s case, she says, because “I don’t believe the continuation of this process will change anything.” It won’t change anything, that is, except whether she and her colleagues have access to more, rather than less, probative evidence on the question before them. If the House decision was hasty and partisan and left a record that is incomplete, that would seem to argue for the Senate proceeding in a fashion that was careful and deliberative, and it would seem to argue for senators to behave in a nonpartisan fashion. [Lawfare]
Or Senator Portman (R-OR):
Sen. Rob Portman was a trifle more coherent in his explanation of this point. He offered that “it sets a dangerous precedent—all but guaranteeing a proliferation of highly partisan, poorly investigated impeachments in the future—if we allow the House of Representatives to force the Senate to compel witness testimony that they never secured for themselves.”
Portman did not, unfortunately, reflect on what precedent it sets for the Senate to impose a no-new-evidence rule on the House, disabling the House from presenting at trial any evidence it did not acquire itself before impeachment. This will of course incentivize presidents (and judges) to withhold material as long as possible during impeachment investigations, thus either delaying impeachment or creating an argument for the evidence’s inadmissibility if impeachment proceeds without it.
Since the Senate did not hear testimony from any of the witnesses who did testify before the House investigation, the rule Portman endorses is really a no-witnesses-at-all rule. If a witness has testified before the House, after all, her testimony is not needed in the Senate. If not, Portman would preclude it because the House did not secure it earlier. Portman’s rule would turn the Senate into an appellate body. The Constitution, by contrast, gives the Senate the role of trying impeachments.
The icing on this ridiculous cake is the notion that hearing witnesses would take too long.
Wittes’ conclusion is their fear to tread on their “leader”:
Yes, inside the herd, life is abusive. But outside, it is very very cold and one is very exposed.
Especially when the wolves howling at the edges of the herd are under the control of the herd leader, isn’t it?
It’s hard to call just about anyone outside of Trump himself a leader in the Republican Party, and he’s so erratic and mendacious that it’s difficult to have any respect for him; consequently, the only reason the Republican Party hasn’t burned to the ground is the support of the Evangelicals, Trump’s hard core base of cultists (more in another post), and the understandable distaste of many voters to examine the political scene these days; it’s easier, and oh-so-convenient for a number of parties, foreign and domestic, for the voters, especially the independents, to just not vote.
That’s why there was some dismay within the Democratic Party at the failure of the Iowa Caucuses to attract a high turnout. A disengaged voter is more likely to vote Republican, at least in the current calculus. And what we need today is a competent Republican Party – not one that turns itself inside out trying to justify voting in accordance with Trump’s wishes.
