I'm not sure about that. McConnell, for example, voted against impeachment, but it certainly does not appear to have been out of loyalty to DJT. How many are like McConnell?
Unlike some others, I don't think I know what "really happened" on November 3 and January 6.
I do think Democrats stole the November 3 election and don't think President Trump "incited" insurrection on January 6.
But what really happened, factually, I don't know for sure.
Apparently some people do "know" the election was stolen (or not) while others "know" Trump "incited" insurrection (or not).
How, exactly, they "know" these things is still, still a mystery to me.
But here's what we do know for sure: some of those Republicans who voted to impeach were the usual suspects, "moderate" Republicans: Murkowski, Collins & Burr.
Those we might say voted to please their Democrat constituents.
Romney voted to impeach, doubtless, out of personal animosity.
That leaves Toomey, Sass & Cassidy, whose votes I can't explain -- except Toomey I know has long been a great disappointment to the Pennsylvania conservatives who elected him and he will not be running for reelection.
I wouldn't count on Pennsylvanians to find a serious electable conservative to replace Toomey.
Both Kentucky senators' (McConnel & Paul) voting records fall between Burr and Toomey, though plenty of others in that range also voted to acquit.
So McConnel (like Thune in SD) may have hoped for some form of "compromise" to satisfy "both sides".
I'm guessing that, as with some others, McConnel's leadership may be nearing its end.
The issue then will be whether Republicans go for another "moderate" to lead them, or for someone seriously more conservative.
In short, will we stick with the old Bush family model -- kinder, gentler, more compassionate conservatives -- or will we flip to the more populist MAGA model, maybe with a Tea Party alliance?
Personally, I like Trump's MAGA model, it should have won in 2020, we'll see how this all plays out...
The crazy thing is that McConnell is normally a fairly slick type, and his argument that Trump deliberately incited an “insurrection” amongst “hundreds” of his (Trump’s) followers is absurd on it’s face. What on earth purpose could such “incitement” accomplish, even IF it had been 10x more effective in recruiting similar “insurrectionists”?
Further, even assuming that, once the false flag types and just plain insane are weeded out of the “hundreds”, you still have 400 left, and assuming only 40 million citizens are true blue, er, red, MAGA / Trump people, that’s 0.001% of Trump supporters who interpreted the President’s statements as meaning they should go stage a revolt, and an utterly hopeless revolt at that. Protesting Congress’ proceedings is not a revolt, or else all the Dems who have supported things like interruptions of Congressional hearings have engaged in inciting insurrection themselves. And DJT in no way encouraged physical interruption of the Congress on Jan. 6. President Trump has always been a law and order type — it is one of the reasons I support him. So, we have 0.001% of the MAGA types who took the President’s comments as reason to riot, and the other 99.999% did not. I’m going with the obvious conclusion that the 99.999% got the correct and intended message. The other .001% — good grief, give me access to 40 million people (and in fact more like 100 million plus) and if I say “Bee-dop-ee-dop-ee-doo—boop-boop-a-doo, meet me in DC and support the red, white and blue” you can probably find 400 idiots who show up to cause trouble.