As Democrats continue to hold impeachment hearings in the House, knowing full well Republicans in the Senate won’t go along with their gambit, Politico reporters attempted to get the Senate GOP to consider censuring President Donald Trump instead.
This way, Democrats could save face and get some sort of “win” for their months-long impeachment investigation by getting the president of the united states censured without actually removing him from office. Of course, it was not Republicans who came up with this idea, but two Politico reporters, who asked Republicans in the House and Senate if they would support such a measure. Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) revealed the ruse in his response, saying he was “not in favor of” censure and that the senate would “wait and see what comes over here, but I haven’t heard anybody discuss it. I haven’t even thought about it until you raised it.”
Senate Majority Whip John Thune (R-SD), told the reporters “I doubt it,” when asked if the GOP was considering censure as an alternative to impeachment.
Sen. Kevin Cramer (R-ND) told Politico he didn’t think the impeachment alternative would get “many, if any, Republican votes” and said such a move “would be an admission that they did something terribly wrong. I just don’t see it.”
Rep. Steve Chabot, who sits on the House Judiciary Committee and was present during Wednesday’s impeachment hearing (where three Democrat-called scholars said Trump should be impeached while a Republican-called scholar said he should not be), told Politico he didn’t “think the Democrats are going to offer” censure as an option, nor did he “think there would be Republican support.”
Politico framed Republican’s refusal to support censure as an issue of political bias:
Even some Republicans who have expressed concerns about Trump’s actions said they’ve given little thought to a rebuke that falls short of impeachment. That antipathy for even a symbolic reprimand of Trump underscores how the president has transformed the Republican Party, in which any break with him can be seen as a personal slight.
An alternative read on the refusal would be that Republicans see the impeachment hearing as a charade and don’t think Trump committed an impeachable offense or even something that out of the norm for a president. Recall that while he was Vice President, Joe Biden helped get a Ukraine prosecutor fired who was investigating a company that employed his son, Hunter. Also recall the Obama administration approved warrants to spy on Trump campaign officials based flimsy rumors about what they may or may not have said in private meetings with individuals who had been assets for government institutions. For Republicans to accept censuring Trump, they would be giving in to the Democrat narrative that Trump has committed an impeachable offense while President Barack Obama did nothing wrong while he was president. Republicans easily could have held impeachment hearings against Obama. The media would have called them a “charade.”
Politico referenced President Bill Clinton’s impeachment, ignoring the difference that Clinton committed an obvious crime – perjury, when he lied about his affair with Monica Lewinsky. Democrats have had to change the name of the crime they claim Trump committed – from quid pro quo to bribery, even though they have not presented evidence that Trump offered Ukraine money in exchange for something – in order to continue selling impeachment to a wary nation.