Come on, Democrats.  I appreciate the theatrical elements of the impeachment vote.  When Republicans shriek and bluster, you feel obliged to find stronger counterarguments.  But stop giving me reasons not to impeach Trump. Listening to the House impeachment hearings is already depressing on lots of levels.  It’s dull and repetitive.

Republicans

I’m not going to linger on the Republican positions.  We’ve heard it all, in every hearing. Their talking points are lies. Each lie has been disproven — we know they’re lying — and yet they just lie to us again and again. Maybe Republicans hope if they bellow loudly enough and slam things around, they can jam that nonsense into our heads against our will?  Anyway, you know the shtick.

Democrats

So, the Democrats. Beyond the impeachment charges, they keep adding more of what they hate about Trump. 

I sympathize; I really do.  Trump is a deliberately, intentionally hateful man, the head of a detestable family, and a long-time bully and thug.  But not every horrible act can drive impeachment.

Nancy Pelosi got the question right a few days ago:

I think the president is a coward when it comes to helping our kids, who are afraid of gun violence.  I think he is cruel when he doesn’t deal with helping our Dreamers, of which we’re very proud.  I think he’s in denial about the climate crisis.

However, that’s about the election.  This is about the — take it up in the election.  This is about the Constitution of the United States and the facts that lead to the president’s violation of his oath of office.

— Nancy Pelosi, Dec. 5 press conference, as quoted in “‘Don’t mess with me’ — House Speaker Nancy Pelosi rips reporter who asks if she hates Trump” (CNBC).

And yes, Trump and his Republicans deliberately pull children – sometimes even infants – away from their parents, and then try to make the children into orphans.  And for some ungodly reason, Evangelicals won’t call him out for that. 

Trump betrays our allies and aids our enemies.  From Ukraine to the Kurds, from North Korea to Russia, Trump intentionally and systematically takes every action we, as a nation, abhor.

The Republican party can’t even keep our government running.  That’s bad enough on its own.  But Trump is a selfish idiot who deliberately undercuts their half-hearted attempts to do their job.  Trump abandoned the Iran agreement simply because Obama negotiated it, and Trump will discard the Paris climate agreement for even less reason.  Trump lies about immigration and insists on building his ‘wall,’ a physically impossible metaphor, and the Republican party seems to encourage him.

Following Trump in utter lockstep, the entire Republican party follows their dear leader away from any principle they ever pretended to believe.  Small government, Constitutionalism, anti-corruption, law-and-order, strong national defense, fiscal conservatism, all abandoned.  What should we conclude? That Republicans will trade any idea for political power? Or that Republicans never believed in those principles in the first place.

But none of those are impeachable offenses. They’re reasons not to impeach, but to unseat.

Don’t get me wrong; the Republican party has become an abomination.  Each new day, Republicans reveal another novel and breathtaking level of hypocrisy.  The impeachment exposed the worst of them. And we’re not even surprised.  Not anymore.  I don’t see any enduring Republican principles beyond racism, civil division, white nationalism, and clinging desperately to power.  They’re willing and able to shred our nation’s social fabric and our critical democratic institutions for a moment’s advantage. 

Any of these moral failures are reasons to kick Trump and every elected Republican, top to bottom, out of office.  They’re cowards and liars.  But all these bits of nonsense are political issues, not high crimes and misdemeanors.

Impeachment

The crimes listed in the House impeachment are strong enough. Our political disagreements, though, are reasons not to impeach Trump.

Disobeying the law is a crime.  That’s how ‘crime’ works.  I hope nobody is surprised about that?  When our President doesn’t obey documented, black-letter law, that’s a crime.  It gets worse when Trump insists he will continue to ignore clearly written law.  That makes our President an outlaw.  That’s how that works.  Finally, when our President disobeys the letter and the spirit of the Constitution itself, he becomes unAmerican.

President Donald John Trump is a criminal, an outlaw, and unAmerican.  The impeachment charges are uncontested: nobody denies the basic facts.  Why bother?  Trump admitted every crime.  When he’s challenged, Trump just confesses to the charges.  Breaking laws in public is one of Donald’s superpowers.   

America can survive immoral and incompetent politicians.  Corrupt politicians are always dangerous; criminals who work to gut America’s internal checks and balances threaten the nation.  Trump and his captive Republican party are on trial for those crimes.

By his own admissions, the Republican president is a criminal, he is an outlaw, and he is insistently unAmerican.  The Republican party allows every crime he commits, unwilling to push back on any point, ever.

Crisis

If we are to survive as a nation of laws, we have to remove Donald Trump.  It’s an existential threat.  I know we overwork that phrase, but it’s true.  

The hapless Republicans can’t deny their child-king the smallest satisfaction. They cannot restrain such a criminal, and they don’t seem to want to brush him back for anything, ever.

That leaves Congress, and it’s critical for all of us. If America cannot hold our leader to account, then the America we aspire to will no longer exist. Trump and his cabinet won’t waste a minute in purging every Democrat and any Civil Servant who isn’t personally loyal to Trump.

In the longer term, we have to remove the corrupt Republican party.  Our current politicians have all followed Trump down his moral rathole.