I think we've seen how Republicans are over the last 4 years, nearly ever single one of them would throw their own mother under a bus to kiss Trump's ring. Just watching them continue to act like this after their terror attacks is even more infuriating, I don't see how we're learning anything new here today.
My concern going forward is that this 2nd impeachment remains just the beginning of consequence for all those having had a part in attack on the core of our government under its (and our) own roof.
There is no excuse save greed and power-lust for the leaders of the Republican Party not to have forfeited the "upside" of a Trump who was attracting some new blood to their political base in a time when their prospects for winning national elections was on the wane.
The downsides of rolling the dice on being able to control Trump were well demonstrated in advance by the principal himself and widely cautioned about by professionals in academia (history, political science, medicine) as well as by mental health care providers including ER and psych nurses. All of them warned of an ugly ending.
Yet even as the 2020 elections loomed --with Trump triangulating his path among fans, real or perceived opponents and his own party's officials-- the Republicans focused merely on how to win... and whether to put daylight between themselves and the President or to appear to embrace him.
They took their cues from allegiances of constituents in given districts and literally paid no mind to what Trump was doing, far less to whatever his agenda-ridden manipulators and lackeys were doing in the scrum for power in the executive branch itself. So their negligence of other matters including allegiance to the Constitution of the administration and even that of their own fellow members of Congress has contributed to the lasting damage done by Trump and his inbuilt (and accelerating) unfitness to serve us.
In short the effect was typically that of a entire family made dysfunctional by having dealt with a severely impaired narcissist for an extended period
Salon spoke to psychologists about how a malignant narcissistic personality would react to a devastating blow to their ego like an election loss
www.salon.com
And, so here we are. Yet the Republican Party's official leadership, still somehow thinking itself beholden to Trump and his authoritarian followers, had only last week signaled its intent to let The Don carry their standard forward to the midterms and 2024. If their enthusiasm was just play acting there, perhaps out fear of their own base, the few old guard members present weren't having it. Haley Barbour was quoted as saying the Republican Party is "whistling past the graveyard".
If that was true early last week, by now it's practically an epitaph. It's a sorry state of affairs when a choice seems made between losing a party out of simple fear and losing it out of craven lust to retain power.
