I've only just discovered this excellent newsletter. Thanks!!!! My comment here's a bit late but anyway...
I appreciate the concern that voting to convict would further polarize the country, but I think this need only have been a concern if there was a requirement only for a simple majority to vote to remove Trump from office.
If, say, 5 Republican Senators had voted to convict, this would not have been polarising because Trump would have remained in office. If 20 had voted to convict I think this would have been sufficiently bipartisan to provide a real foundation for healing after the Trump had gone.
So I think every Senator should just have voted on the merits as they saw it, and not concerned themselves with polarisation.
Of course, the same applies even more so in the House. What a great Christian witness it would have been if some representatives who identify as Christians had voted for the articles of impeachment. In doing this they need not have been saying that Trump should be certainly removed from office, but that his behaviour was utterly unnacceptable, and removal should at least be considered by the Senate.
I'd also tentatively suggest that removing Trump might actually have help Republicans retain the White House in November. I think the Coronavirus crisis would have allowed Mike Pence to shine as a unifying figure, and made him a much stronger candidate than Trump will be. I'm speculating there, but it's certainly true that doing the right thing sometimes helps you in unexpected ways.
My final point is that it really annoys me the way some criticized the possibility of removing Trump from office as inherently undemocratic. This ignores the fact that all the House and much of Senate was elected more recently than Trump.
But it also seems somewhat inconsistent, in so far as many of the same people were happy to see Trump elected even though he had a great many less overall votes than Hillary Clinton.
I would have thought that, on its face, Trump''s election was a somewhat undemocratic outcome. Yet it was an outcome that was legitimised by the Constitution. Similarly, I can see how removing an elected President, on its face, would seem undemocratic. But the impeachment process is just a much a part of the Constitution just as much as the Electoral College. If the former is illegimate, then surely the latter is too!
All of this. Deeply ponder how USA Spiral Dynamics Consciousness levels will effect votes & Gandin’s “End of the Myth”.
I've only just discovered this excellent newsletter. Thanks!!!! My comment here's a bit late but anyway...
I appreciate the concern that voting to convict would further polarize the country, but I think this need only have been a concern if there was a requirement only for a simple majority to vote to remove Trump from office.
If, say, 5 Republican Senators had voted to convict, this would not have been polarising because Trump would have remained in office. If 20 had voted to convict I think this would have been sufficiently bipartisan to provide a real foundation for healing after the Trump had gone.
So I think every Senator should just have voted on the merits as they saw it, and not concerned themselves with polarisation.
Of course, the same applies even more so in the House. What a great Christian witness it would have been if some representatives who identify as Christians had voted for the articles of impeachment. In doing this they need not have been saying that Trump should be certainly removed from office, but that his behaviour was utterly unnacceptable, and removal should at least be considered by the Senate.
I'd also tentatively suggest that removing Trump might actually have help Republicans retain the White House in November. I think the Coronavirus crisis would have allowed Mike Pence to shine as a unifying figure, and made him a much stronger candidate than Trump will be. I'm speculating there, but it's certainly true that doing the right thing sometimes helps you in unexpected ways.
My final point is that it really annoys me the way some criticized the possibility of removing Trump from office as inherently undemocratic. This ignores the fact that all the House and much of Senate was elected more recently than Trump.
But it also seems somewhat inconsistent, in so far as many of the same people were happy to see Trump elected even though he had a great many less overall votes than Hillary Clinton.
I would have thought that, on its face, Trump''s election was a somewhat undemocratic outcome. Yet it was an outcome that was legitimised by the Constitution. Similarly, I can see how removing an elected President, on its face, would seem undemocratic. But the impeachment process is just a much a part of the Constitution just as much as the Electoral College. If the former is illegimate, then surely the latter is too!