Does the Senate even have to take up an impeachment resolution and try it? Or can they ignore it? They’d like to do this because it would tie things up even more than the molder probe. I think leadership is calculating the political cost. The rabid ones don’t care about the consequences.
I have argued that the Senate should receive the impeachment, and refuse to take it up, passing a resolution instead that says that “the bill of impeachment sent by the House does not describe high crimes and misdemeanors that are sufficient to subject a President to a Senate impeachment trial”. That would be that.
Does Mitch have the cojones to do that? More important, with Mitt and the RINO twins, would he have 50 votes for the resolution? I can see the 2/3 of Republicans who are RINOs saying that they need to let the process play out, they have to give respect to the House or some such nonsense. Then the trial would become an absolute zoo. You’d have Stormy Daniels testifying, and Cohen, and McGahn and all kinds of crazy things and it would devolve into some version of what a trial by chimp would look like.
When Clinton was impeached, the Senate severely limited the procedure. They wouldn’t let the House present a case, or have witnesses. They had to basically summarize the Starr report, then argue, then hold the vote. It was a travesty of what was supposed to happen. This time, I could see the Senate agreeing to do a no-holds barred circus.
The main thing to prevent this is FEAR and to develop fear, Trump needs to put a LOT of deep state scumbags in jail, including a few congressfolks, and threaten others if they continue with the nonsense.