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Notes -
There's a lot of political implications from this week that have to be talked through, so I guess this place is going to be busy for a while with top level posts.
I've been thinking about this suggestion that Republicans should let Trump be impeached for a while since it was posted. What does getting rid of Trump get Republicans? The left is going to really enjoy getting the guy they've wanted to get and they would hold Orange Hitler over the Republican Party for perhaps decades. He got Republicans a lot of wins. He is probably the most Red Tribe candidate, in terms of policies and rhetoric, that Red Tribe could have gotten in 2016. To ditch him seems pretty ungrateful and Machiavellian.
On the other hand, politics really are inherently Machiavellian, and if Republicans don't ditch him, he stays in politics even after leaving office. That means he still exerts incredible influence to eliminate good candidates through primary challenges and condemnations, put forward bad candidates with campaign money and endorsements, and hog the spotlight. Just like JD Vance's debate in 2024 with Tim Walz, everyone will have to talk very carefully to not accidentally speak ill of his presidency or his policies or his ideas, unless he undergoes some kind of personality shift.
With how Trump has performed, and how much political capital he had already spent, I imagine that there would be appetite among surviving GOP Congressmen to let Trump be impeached. He could be tyrannical at times, and threatened to primary a lot of people, and for many of the conservatives that submitted, their reward was career suicide.
Edit to add: Marco Rubio may be considering resignation. Blue commenters smell blood:
I have no doubts that much of Congress is thinking the same thing. There is will, capability, and justification to prosecute every single member of the administration, including Rubio. In my opinion, they won't stop at Trump. They'll try to get everyone.
This smells to me like misinterpreting the political mandate in the same way Trump seems to have: our recent election cycles seem to be "which do you dislike less?" to the median voter (they are to me, at least). Reading the election outcome as embracing left-wing, as opposed to left-center or even just not-right-wing, views is just going to repeat the cycle. Voters still don't want no enforced immigration laws, even if they voted against maximal jackbooted enforcement.
To wit, I think various attempts at prosecuting Trump during the Biden administration was a huge self-own that drove the 2024 cycle. Did "37 felonies" on rather, uh, Trumped-up charges win them votes they didn't have already? It certainly let Republicans argue they were being politically targeted, and that anyone who fell out of the progressive line would be next.
Current politics is just Mean Girls without the adults.
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