She said that "The House rushed through what should be one of the most serious, consequential undertakings of the legislative branch simply to meet an artificial, self-imposed deadline." That "artificial, self-imposed deadline" is the fucking 2020 election. The rush was to make sure that Trump couldn't game it, corrupt it, or, you know, invite foreign countries to get involved by digging up dirt on his rivals and using U.S. foreign policy to get his way. If you know an arsonist is about to set a fire, you stop the fucking arsonist before shit is burned to the ground.
Continuing her speech to the Senate, after a bunch of both-sides garbage, she offered, "The response to the President’s behavior is not to disenfranchise nearly 63 million Americans and remove him from the ballot." Except no one is talking about the disenfranchisement of voters (well, yeah, Republicans are, but not in this case). It's one of those idiot arguments that get the rubes to think you're standing up for them when you're really just not making any goddamn sense. They have the right to vote. They just couldn't vote for one particular candidate. Murkowski is also implying that Republicans have no one else to run for president.
Then, with willful naïveté, Murkowski said, "The Constitution provides for impeachment, but does not demand it in all instances. An incremental first step, to remind the President that, as Montesquieu said, 'Political virtue is a renunciation of oneself' and this requires 'a continuous preference of the public interest over one’s own.'" That's fuckin' hilarious. Yeah, Lisa, go to Donald fuckin' Trump and remind him of what an 18th-century French philosopher said. He'll quote Sean Hannity back at you between Big Mac bites as you dodge crumbs being spit in your face.
Even worse is Maine's own anthropomorphic bowl of Jello, Sen. Susan Collins. Her reasoning for not voting to remove Trump from office is as delusional as someone investing in a Trump University education: "I believe the president has learned from this case...The president has been impeached. That's a pretty big lesson...I believe he will be much more cautious in the future." I'm cynical enough to think that Collins knows this is unrepentant bullshit, but if she really believes this, then, seriously, someone should introduce her to Donald Trump because that asshole has never felt chastened and the only "lesson" he's learned is "Say you're right loud enough and often enough and everyone will agree just to make you shut the fuck up about it."
Tennessee's Lamar Alexander, one of those fake moderates you occasionally hear about but only see as unreal Bigfoot-like blurs running past the Capitol, tried to sound rational in his declaration of Trumpian exoneration. Look at this bastard try to thread a rusty needle: "It was inappropriate for the president to ask a foreign leader to investigate his political opponent and to withhold United States aid to encourage that investigation. When elected officials inappropriately interfere with such investigations, it undermines the principle of equal justice under the law. But the Constitution does not give the Senate the power to remove the president from office and ban him from this year’s ballot simply for actions that are inappropriate."
Actually, the Constitution gives the Senate the power to remove a president if it agrees with the House and convicts that president, even for, you know, "misdemeanors." But look at that shit. Alexander says that Trump was undermining "the principle of equal justice under the law." That's pretty fucking significant. And he added, just to sound like he's a thoughtful, dignified statesman instead of the elderly errand boy for a bloated, mad, ignorant dictator-in-waiting, "The framers believed that there should never, ever be a partisan impeachment." There were no goddamn political parties when the Constitution was written. Fucking hell.
Alexander bemoans the "partisan" nature of the House vote for the articles of impeachment, yet, weirdly, doesn't seem to have any problem with witnesses being blocked from testifying by a vote of just Republicans. Apparently, "partisan" only means "Democrats."
We are moving into a degradation of this country's checks and balances the likes of which we haven't seen. Sometimes I think it's more important for Democrats to take back the Senate than it is to win the presidency. That way, Democrats can assert the power of the Legislative Branch in full and restore some kind of fuckin' balance.
