George Will On Congressional Republicans

From The Washington Post:

Trump’s gross and comprehensive incompetence now increasingly impinges upon the core presidential responsibility. This should, but will not, cause congressional Republicans to value their own and their institution’s dignity and exercise its powers more vigorously than they profess fealty to Trump. He has issued a categorical refusal to supply witnesses and documents pertinent to the House investigation of whether he committed an impeachable offense regarding Ukraine. This refusal, which is analogous to an invocation of the Fifth Amendment protection against self-incrimination, justifies an inference of guilt. Worse, this refusal attacks our constitutional regime. So, the refusal is itself an impeachable offense.

While there are certainly many many other positions of Will's that people can rightfully dispute (marriage equality, climate science), he is at the very least a thoughtful conservative - even if he gets some really important stuff really really wrong.

He's right about Trump.

And then there's Representative Guy Reschenthaler:

The @WhiteHouse is exposing the “impeachment inquiry” for what it really is: an unprecedented, illegitimate sham that throws fairness & due process out the window. @SpeakerPelosi will stop at nothing to overturn the will of the American people who chose @realDonaldTrump.

— Rep. Guy Reschenthaler (@GReschenthaler) October 9, 2019

I'll give the floor back to Will:

Trump is not just aggressively but lawlessly exercising the interests of his place, counting on Congress, after decades of lassitude regarding its interests, being an ineffective combatant. Trump’s argument, injected into him by subordinates who understand that absurdity is his vocation, is essentially that the Constitution’s impeachment provisions are unconstitutional.

And:

In 13 months, all congressional Republicans who have not defended Congress by exercising “the constitutional rights of the place” should be defeated. If congressional Republicans continue their genuflections at Trump’s altar, the appropriate 2020 outcome will be a Republican thrashing so severe — losing the House, the Senate and the electoral votes of, say, Georgia, Arizona, North Carolina and even Texas — that even this party of slow-learning careerists might notice the hazards of tethering their careers to a downward-spiraling scofflaw.

Thus spake the conservative, equality- and science- denying George F. Will.