Why Impeachment is Still Going to Be Partisan

Wow!  Developments on the impeachment have been happening very fast, faster than I could keep up.  My first thought on hearing that a whistle blower had something very inflammatory to report, on someone who was not part of the intelligence community was that it had to be either Donald Trump or William Barr.  Either Trump had done something wildly corrupt, or Barr was doing something abusive in his investigation of the Russia investigation.

The next report was that it was about a phone call with a foreign leader.  The Washington Post listed five known communications with foreign leaders in the five weeks before the whistle blower letter.  The only one that was a phone call was with Vladimir Putin, purportedly about wildfires in Siberia.  So I guessed that it was yet another discussion about how Russia could evade sanctions. 

And just to be clear, plotting with Putin to evade sanctions would be impeachable.  The sanctions were a law passed by Congress.  While agitating for the repeal of a law passed by Congress, or challenging it in court as unconstitutional are perfectly legitimate partisan politics, secretly plotting to evade such a law is as clear and impeachable offense as one could ask for.*  Impeachment in such a case would not look partisan.  The sanctions were passed with the overwhelming support of both parties.  And I thought even Republicans might be persuaded to support impeachment, partly because it was their law as much as the Democrats', and partly because, while Republicans might be willing to tolerate Trump shooting someone in the middle of Fifth Avenue, I did not expect them to tolerate an insufficiently aggressive foreign policy.

But all that is moot.  The phone call turned out to be with the President of Ukraine, seeking evidence of dirty dealing by Joe Biden.  And to Democrats this was a bridge too far.  Up till then, Democrats had held out the hope of getting rid of Trump in the next election.  But that presupposed that the next election would be free and fair.  If Trump was plotting with a foreign government to subvert the next election, suddenly events took an altogether different shape.

But it can't possibly look that way to Republicans.  To Republicans, impeaching Donald Trump for looking for foreign dirty on his Democratic rival -- even fake foreign dirt -- is bound to look partisan.  And impeaching him for efforts to win the next election -- even dishonest efforts -- is not going to hold much appeal.

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*And, yes, I do think this means that GWB's policies of indefinite detention, torture, and warrantless surveillance were impeachable.