Todd Bishop
Since the House Committees began launching an impeachment investigation of US President Donald Trump, the support of the American people and the two parties for the impeachment investigation has also changed. In particular, the attitude of Republicans in the Senate who have “judicial power” on possible impeachment clauses in the future is naturally the focus of public opinion. In theory, if Congress wants to pass the impeachment case, at least 69 senators will be found guilty of Trump, and then Trump will be dismissed from the presidency.
Assuming that all Democratic senators support the impeachment vote, at least 20 Republican senators are required to support the impeachment case. Former senior Republican Senator Jeff Flake, who left last year, conservatively estimated on September 28 that at least 35 Republican senators would support the impeachment of Trump.
That is to say, many senators will slowly change their attitudes as time goes by. In the “Watergate Incident”, George HW Bush and other leading Republican senators were initially defending Nixon, but with the impeachment investigation, the Republican Party slowly changed its attitude. They also do not want their political career or historical status to be stained by impeachment.
The whistleblower said that after the White House tried to cover up the evidence of the call, the American public’s attitude toward the impeachment of Trump changed significantly. A number of polls show that the proportion of people who support the impeachment of Trump has risen significantly in the past few days.
According to a poll released by the US consulting firm Morning Consult on September 27th, 43% of US voters believe that Congress should open impeachment lawsuits against Trump, which is higher than the one week before the exposure of Tongwumen. Out of 8 percentage points. Similarly, among Republicans, the percentage of support for impeaching Trump has risen from 5% to 10%.
Most Republican senators are currently silent. Only Pennsylvania Republican Senator Pat Toomey believes that Trang’s Putonghua dialect is “out of date”; Utah Senator, former Republican presidential candidate, Roma Mitt Romney thinks Trump’s words and deeds are “worrying.” Most Republican senators take a silent or evasive attitude.
The reason is simple. It is still difficult to judge the impact of the impeachment investigation on the 2020 election of Trump and the Republican Party. Many cases are ambiguous, including the fact that the informant’s hearing in Congress has not yet taken place. Many senators, especially those who face re-election in 2020, do not want to impeach their choices and future political careers. The Republicans who had previously opposed Trump and later began to form an alliance with the Trump administration did not express their views. For example, Marco Rubio, Tim Scott, Roy Blunt, and John McCain’s successor, Martha McSally, and others.
In particular, Republican Senator Lindsey Graham has become the vanguard of Trump’s defense. According to US media reports, Graham is closely coordinating with the White House senior consultant Jared Kushner and other editors to ensure the consistency of the external public relations and defense.
Graham does not think that Trump has sold US national security interests in conversations with Ukrainian leaders. Instead of the White House, Graham pointed the finger at the informant, claiming that the allegations were based entirely on official fragmentation. In Bill Clinton’s impeachment case, Graham was a member of the House of Representatives, who boosted the impeachment investigation of Clinton, when he said that advancing the impeachment agenda was related to the honor and integrity of the highest US leadership.
American journalist and columnist David Leonhardt wrote in the New York Times on September 29 to call on the Republican Party to abandon Trump. Leonhardt said in the article that if the Republican flagship figures like Ronald Reagan or Dwight David Eisenhower put the security of a country threatened by Russia in order to disparage domestic political opponents, What do you think about the risk situation? Reagan called the United States “Shining city upon a hill,” while Trump called his country “a hellhole.”
Leonhardt believes that possible Republican senators may come from camps that vote for Hillary Clinton or other candidates. For example, Republican Senators Susan Collins, Lisa Murkowski, and Dan Sullivan.
BJ Rudel, director of the Center for Political Leadership at Duke University in the United States, said in a commentary published in the Hill on September 28 that the longer the waiting time, the greater the damage to the Republican Party. . If Trump is given up now, the Republican Party still has time to run around Burns, and maybe even increase the Republican appeal through a new vice president.
Judging from the investigation process of Tongmenmen, the Democratic Party is easy to make a sloppy conclusion and make a guilty inference against Trump, but the results of the investigation are not what the Democratic Party wants. Even though Trump and his team showed their willingness to accept Hillary’s black material, there was no tangible evidence.
Republicans may use this as a basis to refute the position of the Democratic Party and defend Trump.
The Tongwumen investigation is different. The House Democrats’ committees first decided to impeach the content of the terms, which involved Trump should not be impeached. In the process, Republicans will certainly be reluctant to avoid adding new materials or morale to the Democratic Party’s investigation, as well as avoiding attacks by conservative media. Moreover, in the case of the Washington Party’s struggle for serious division, the Republican Party will naturally take self-protection as its priority, and it will be difficult to cross the party’s boundaries and take risks.
