What are Republicans really getting out of all this?
by digby
As you absorb the Republican strategy to defend their corrupt Dear Leader, consider what it is exactly they are defending. Greg Sargent lays out the details and concludes with this:
With extraordinary new details emerging about how hard Trump and his advisers worked to reap gains from Russian interference, pressure on Ukraine to make all this disappear constitutes yet another way Trump continues using the power of his office to dodge accountability for already documented, extraordinarily corrupt conduct. This is what Republicans are defending.
You will hear claims that the evidence against Trump is hearsay. This isn’t true — the evidence is right in the call summary; Giuliani has publicly advertised the whole scheme; Ambassador Gordon Sondland admitted to conveying the extortion message to Ukraine.
Beyond that, even as Republicans make this claim, Trump has corruptly prevented many with direct involvement in the plot from testifying, such as acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney, who froze the military aid at Trump’s direction. Giuliani is defying a subpoena.
The larger context here is that Trump’s legal team has argued that he can close down investigations into himself and that he can’t be investigated. Trump skirted prosecution for obstruction of justice due to regulations against indicting a sitting president.
“Every serious scholar who adheres to the view that a sitting president cannot be indicted combines that view with the belief that the impeachment process is the way to deal with a lawless president,” points out Neal Katyal. “Otherwise a president could engage in extreme wrongdoing, and the American people would have no remedy.”
But Trump and Republicans are arguing that impeachment is an illegitimate coup, and using that to justify efforts to close down Congress’ exercise of its legitimate impeachment authority.
In short, they are arguing that there is no remedy. Trump is free to use his office to rig the next election to avoid accountability at the hands of voters, and to close down efforts to constrain him from doing that — and to hold him accountable for it.
Let’s be clear. It’s true that they are intent upon giving the president a green light to do anything and everything he wants to do — even impulsively endanger national security for obscure reasons.
But they can also read the polls. They know they need the help too. They are more than defenders of the President. They are accomplices and beneficiaries.