Once again, this ought to be the focus one your attention this year: Ed Luce: The Guilty Verdict on the Republican Party https://www.ft.com/content/b8e67780-3d85-11ea-a01a-bae547046735: 'Washington is staging the opposite of a Moscow show trial. In the Soviet version, Joseph Stalin would coerce innocent comrades into false professions of guilt. In Donald Trump’s Senate trial, the US president’s party is proclaiming the innocence of an allegedly guilty man. The overlap is that each trial was pre-cooked before it began. Republicans would face no firing squads or Siberian exile for defying their leader. The worst Mr Trump could do is to incite primary challenges, or banish them from his clubs. Some might even call that an incentive. How did America’s Grand Old Party turn into a rigged jury for Mr Trump? It is not love of the US constitution, though Republicans ritually profess faith in America’s founding documents. They have been taking their cue from Pat Cipollone, Mr Trump’s White House counsel, part of whose case is that the US president’s impeachment was “rigged”. That is to confuse impeachment with trial. The former is an indictment. The Senate is refusing to conduct a good faith trial, since it will not permit new witnesses or documents to be introduced...
...Trump... used the threat of withheld aid to pressure a foreign leader to interfere in the US presidential election. The only question is whether this amounted to “high crime or misdemeanour”, which America’s founders characterised as abuse of public trust. Having deprived the House of Representatives of critical witnesses and records, Mr Trump is now bragging that his accusers lack proof. “We have the material,” Mr Trump said this week. This is the equivalent of the accused pronouncing from the dock that he is withholding critical evidence because the court has no standing. Stalin might have chuckled at that approach. Mr Trump’s Senate allies are dutifully repeating it.
Mr Cipollone’s second defence is that presidents routinely investigate corruption in foreign countries. The fact that Mr Trump has never shown interest in pursuing corruption anywhere other than Ukraine—and in only one instance—is surely relevant.... Constraining executive power is a basic tenet of US conservatism.... It has become fashionable to dismiss Mr Trump’s impeachment as a dull charade. Republicans may even benefit from the US public’s boredom with the proceedings. That may turn out to be true. Mr Trump could be re-elected in November. Yet it could be worse. Only one of America’s parties has surrendered to a Caesar. Whatever its faults, the Democratic party still shows some faith in the system. If that goes, the founding virtues that Republicans once held dear will vanish with the party...
#noted #2020-01-31
