If the Democrats win control of the House and launch impeachment proceedings against President Donald Trump, the working assumption today is that there are not 67 senators, the required supermajority, who would vote to convict, and Trump would be acquitted and on his merry way to declare victory.
Not so fast, says Elaine Kamarck, a senior fellow in the Governance Studies program at the Brookings Institution. I’ve known Kamarck since the 1992 Clinton-Gore campaign and her work with Vice President Gore on reinventing government. She is a policy person known for careful research and centrist ideas, so her Brookings study stating that conviction in the Senate is not impossible caught my attention.
“In politics, arithmetic matters,” Kamarck told The Daily Beast in an interview. “The arithmetic in both institutions [House and Senate] makes the guy look invincible, and he’s not.”
Assurances that Trump is safe in the Senate are based on assumptions that could crumble after major GOP losses in November. Republicans will be eager to rebrand themselves and untether themselves from Trump, no longer the political colossus he was. “You don’t need all the Republicans,” she says. “You need between 17 and 20 (less than half the GOP caucus).”
A Washington Post survey in October 2017 counted 16 Republican senators as outspoken against Trump on various issues. Kamarck admits it’s “a stretch” to assume they’d be a yes on impeachment but says you also can’t assume they will be a no in a changed political environment where Trump’s invincibility has been challenged by the voters and/or by special counsel Robert Mueller.
Trump’s inflated rating among Republicans today instills fear in Republicans facing primary challenges. But it’s a lock on a party that is getting smaller, says Kamarck, and that could be reflected in the midterms. “A lot of people don’t like Trump and have left the party,” she notes. “That puts a damper on invincibility.”
She sees the Helsinki summit as a turning point. Fourteen Republican senators criticized Trump specifically; 24 criticized Russian President Vladimir Putin, a safer line of attack; just two supported Trump, and the rest said nothing. “No more Republican lap dogs,” she says.
Much of the mainstream media denounces Republicans as spineless quislings, but Kamarck says you can’t expect politicians to dump all over the president when their party is in jeopardy. When it matters, as with Helsinki, and critical Obamacare and budget votes, some Republicans found their courage.
Trump calls defectors names like stupid and quitters, “which is the reason I think he is weaker than we think,” says Kamarck. “The way he has insulted and demeaned 15 to 20 Republican senators over the last three years, bullying and disdaining them. He has no friends. When Bill Clinton went into the Senate (for impeachment trial), a Republican Senate, not only did they think sex was not an impeachable offense, he had friends. Trump has no friends. It’s a lot easier to be a patriot when you hate the guy and he’s insulted you and your family.”
The looming prospect of major losses in the midterms, now less than 100 days away, factors into the impeachment process. Democrats are likely to take back control of the House, where articles of impeachment could be passed in the Judiciary Committee and on the floor on a majority vote.
The hurdle is the Senate, where conviction requires 67 votes.
The current senate has 51 Republicans, 47 Democrats, and two Independents who caucus with the Democrats. After the election, it will be close to a 50/50 Senate, whichever party is in control, and if there’s enough of a wave, Democrats might even pick up a seat or two, with Nevada and Tennessee looking the most promising. There will be new faces, among them Mitt Romney, elected to the Senate from Utah and making his last stand in politics.
Mormons are so anti-Trump that conservative Utah gave Trump just 45 percent of its vote—less than the combined total of Hillary Clinton and independent Republican Evan McMullin. Romney owes nothing to Trump, who humiliated him like he did all the others. It’s not impossible to imagine, 45 years after Barry Goldwater, another Republican going to the White House and delivering the rationale for resignation, says Kamarck.
If Republican Dean Heller loses in Nevada, and Democratic former Gov. Phil Bredesen prevails in Tennessee, and Democrats pick up retiring Sen. Jeff Flake’s Arizona seat, it’s possible to imagine more Republicans jumping ship. “Once you are out of an election year, safe for another two years or in the Senate six years, there might be room for good old-fashioned patriotism, doing what’s right,” says Kamarck.
After Helsinki, some Fox News hosts made remarks critical of Trump. “If Mueller comes out with something that is devastating, Fox News will have to report that. There’s only so much nonsense they can spew out—and they did get critical after Helsinki,” she says.
“Watch the behavior of Republicans in the Senate and Fox News when we see what Mueller comes up with. That’s the game,” she says.
“I tell my Democratic friends, we’ve got to learn to love Mike Pence. This is about the salvation of the republic and democracy,” she says.
Democrats don’t want Pence because he’s competent and could push through more of the conservative agenda. But having Pence in the wings ready from day one could make Republicans more able to do what everybody said they would never do: Vote to convict a president of their own party in an impeachment trial.
