Republicans Gradually Came To Support The Nixon Impeachment

Click here for an article at The Washington Post by William S. Cohen entitled "When will the Republican silence on Trump end?"

Cohen is a former Republican congressman, senator and defense secretary who served on the House Judiciary Committee in 1974 during the Watergate impeachment inquiry. And the point he makes is that originally, when the Watergate burglars were arrested and the story began to develop, Republicans were solidly behind Nixon, a popular president who won reelection by a massive margin in 1972.

Commenting on the present state of affairs, he says:

With the exception thus far of Rep. Justin Amash (R-Mich.), Republicans have taken the position that Mueller’s redacted report has resolved all issues of alleged presidential collusion with the Russians and obstruction of justice. Case closed.

This is not a tenable position. The Mueller report has raised nearly as many questions as it has answered. But more important, as someone who legislatively helped craft the original Office of Special Counsel, I can attest that Congress never intended to subcontract out its investigative powers to the executive branch.

He goes on to say:

At the moment, public opinion polls indicate that a majority opposes impeachment proceedings against Trump. It also appears unlikely that two-thirds of the Senate would support removing the president from office based on the evidence currently available.

And:

During the Watergate scandal, the majority of the American people initially opposed impeachment proceedings being launched against President Richard M. Nixon.

But as the hearings moved forward, we learned that, among other activities, the president had authorized the payment of “hush” money to those who had engaged in criminal activity; urged his subordinates to commit perjury before Congress; attempted to have the CIA derail an ongoing FBI investigation; and sought to use the IRS to punish those on a list of his political enemies.

[All of those findings apply to Trump.] Cohen goes on to say:

The silence of Republicans today in the face of presidential behavior that is unacceptable by any reasonable standard is both striking and deeply disappointing.

When one talks privately to some Republican members about a president who lurches from tweet to taunt; who, according to those who have worked closely beside him, is incapable of telling the truth even in mundane situations; who accepts the word of Vladimir Putin and rejects the unanimous judgment of our intelligence community that Russia launched a cyberattack at the very heart of our democracy; and whose toxic combination of egotism and insecurity distorts the basic process of governing, they express their disdain and even alarm at how he conducts the nation’s affairs.

Yet, the same members are reluctant to speak out publicly even in the face of behavior they would find intolerable by any previous occupant of the Oval Office.

Republicans who do not venture outside the Fox bubble believe the propaganda they are being force-fed: No collusion, no obstruction, the president was exonerated, the crimes involved were perpetrated by the corrupt investigators. When they learn the truth, the tide will turn.