Now that Democratic Speaker Nancy Pelosi has green-lighted an impeachment inquiry against President Trump, it’s urgent that his opponents fully embrace the reality that the corrupt and authoritarian threat he poses extends far beyond the White House, to the Republican Party at large. To date, the GOP has acquiesced to every undemocratic, authoritarian, treasonous, and racist tendency of this president. The GOP nominated Trump; has supported Trump with only the barest and most fragile dissent since his election; and has remained quiescent in the face of the president’s numerous impeachable acts up to now, whether it’s his collusion with Russian in the 2016 election and subsequent obstruction of its investigation, his embrace of white supremacist immigration policies, or his instigation of violence against minorities and the free press. As I’ve argued many times before, it is not simply that the GOP has given in to Trump; prior to Trump, and more so since his election, mainstream Republican policies and practices have moved in a racist, authoritarian direction, from a reliance on gerrymandering and voter suppression to gain political office, to a decades-long plan to stack the judiciary with right-wing judges dedicated to promoting the interests of the rich and powerful over ordinary Americans.
So although the impeachment effort has been sparked by the president’s recent attempts to leverage Ukraine into his political vendetta against Joe Biden, the Democrats’ use of impeachment will be a failure to the degree it is abstracted from its overwhelming historical and political context. One of the major arguments against impeachment has been that the GOP-controlled Senate would never vote to convict the president, which would mean the process would inevitably end in failure, and perhaps even in an affirmation of the president’s power. Yet, as increasing numbers of politicians and observers are arguing, impeachment can put not only the president, but his defenders in the GOP, on trial. If what Donald Trump has done as president truly requires his removal, then GOP senators (and representatives, for that matter) will be forced to either break with the man, or to effectively embrace his corruption as their own.
It is extremely likely that GOP congresspeople will defend and acquit the president, because the GOP itself has essentially declared war on American democracy, driven by a recognition that the party is doomed to minority status due to demographic changes and a growing embrace of liberalism by American voters. Beyond this, the Democrats as a whole have not yet reckoned with the fact that Trump and the GOP simply refuse to believe that the Democrats are a legitimate political party, that the Democratic Party even has a right to exist. (GOP politicians uniformly refuse to use the Democrats’ actual name!) When you have internalized such extremism, can it really be any surprise that even presidential treason can be justified against the Democrats as an act of patriotism against internal enemies?
Only by acknowledging the full scope of the crisis, and communicating it to the public, will Democrats be able to employ impeachment to maximum advantage: not simply as an attempt to rebuke and rein in the president, but as a cudgel to indict the GOP as a whole and lay the groundwork for a cataclysmic, generational repudiation of the party and its authoritarian mindset. Only politicians blinkered to the true depth of our situation would see the GOP’s embrace of such a president as somehow harmful to the Democrats, rather than as the death grip of a party so far gone that it can no longer tell patriotism from treason.
As they face the inevitable pushback from the president and his defenders in Congress, Democrats also need to grasp that Trump and the GOP are acting out of weakness, not strength; why else would they be so eager to seek foreign assistance in the next election? Just as the GOP sees gerrymandering and voter suppression as essential to maintaining power despite the party’s dwindling base, so the party must look to allies abroad to hedge against its failure as a major American political party. In the face of multiple polls showing Trump’s extreme weakness going into 2020 — whether it’s the way he trails the leading Democratic presidential candidates, or how his support among white working-class women has fallen off a cliff — for the Democrats to act as if the slightest misstep will result in their electoral annihilation is bizarre. Why on earth should they be on the defensive when it’s Trump and the GOP who are losing popular support? Beyond this, in the case of the Ukraine scandal, the president’s actions are literally directed at the ability of the Democrats to compete in 2020. The idea of sitting tight and waiting for 2020 is tantamount to embracing a suicide pact; some Democratic politicians may be content to do so, but this would be a betrayal of the rights of American voters.
Since Trump’s election, the GOP has signaled its contempt for American democracy and liberal values by its support of this cruel and lawless president. In covering for his collusion with Russia and now his attempts to enlist Ukraine in his war on the Democratic Party, Republican Senate and House members have chosen party over the fair play of democracy. The Democrats can’t shy away from what has become an existential fight for American democracy, and to press the vulnerability of Republicans to maximum advantage. The uniform GOP defense of Trump has so far protected the president, but it has also opened the party up to catastrophic collapse. Should essentially all GOP congresspeople continue with their lockstep support of the president, individual politicians will be tainted and taken down by their association with this corrupt man. Yet if even a small number of more honest or cunning members break with the president, they will expose the president’s remaining supporters as mindless lackeys, and themselves to judgment for their prior aid and comfort to a lawless chief executive. The Democrats can’t shy away from raining fire and brimstone onto a party that has so badly lost its way.