I don't know about you, but I spent much of the month of December 2016 in a near constant panic attack.
Because after reeling from an election that didn't go at all the way the polls predicted, it became patently obvious how tenuous and how optimistic our Founding Fathers were when they tasked "checks and balances" of the Executive Branch to Congress.
Obviously, despite lip service to wanting to control abuses of office, James Madison and his compatriots counted on a certain level of respect for norms and institutions and did not enshrine these checks and balances into laws. They couldn't have foreseen the norm-buster that is Donald Trump, nor the complete partisan cravenness of today's Republican Party.
So my political brain gamed out all the possible ways that we were screwed. After all, Trump openly bragged about being able to shoot people on the busiest avenue of the most populous city in the nation without losing a supporter and of the ability to sexually assault women with impunity. And amazingly, his cult-like supporters proved him right. And that's when the panic set in.
My husband, who was in college during the Watergate hearings, took a far more optimistic view of things. He insisted that the Republican majority was certainly going to give Trump slack, and take advantage of their majorities to pass legislation that they had been promising their donors for years. But as soon as those tax cuts were passed, and as soon as Trump's eccentricities became a liability to their re-election chances, they would dump him, just like the Republicans did to Nixon during Watergate.
Turns out, I was right. As Katon Dawson, longtime GOP strategist, admits to Joy Reid, there is literally nothing that Trump could do which would result in the GOP majority in Congress moving forward with impeachment proceedings.
Emoluments Clause? psshhhht
Being a Russian Operative? yawn
Sharing intelligence with hostile nations? shrug
Think about that. Without cringing, without apology, without acknowledgment of how incredibly democracy-destroying this is, a GOP adviser admits that the Republican Party will NEVER--under any circumstance--put the country over their party.
Don't you forget that for one moment on Election Day.
