How Are Republicans Going To Explain Voting Against an "Obstruction" Article of Impeachment?
Will Hurd has had enough.
During the open impeachment hearing on November 21, Hurd used his time to issue a statement declaring that he was against impeachment. The nub of his argument is the following:
Trumpās July 25 phone call with President Volodymyr Zelensky was āinappropriate,ā āmisguided foreign policyā and ānot how the executive should handle such things.ā
Hurd ādisagreesā with such ābungling foreign policy.ā
This bungling āundermined our national security.ā
Also ā[t]hereās also a lot we do not know. We have not heard from Rudy Giuliani. We havenāt heard from Hunter Biden.ā
But "an impeachable offense should be compelling, overwhelming, clear and unambiguous.
āAnd it's not something to be rushed or taken lightly. I've not heard evidence proving the president committed bribery or extortion."
And just like thatāpoofāHurd absolved himself of needing to support any forthcoming articles of impeachment.
Which is absurd.
āImpeachmentā is not a monolith.
It is not an omnibus bill, a comprehensive piece of legislation in which House members can say they like some parts, but deem others unacceptable, and then declare that they have no choice but to vote against the whole megillah.
Soon, possibly this week, the House will assemble several articles of impeachment. These will be voted on, first by the Judiciary Committee and then by the full House. Members can vote for all of them, some of them, or none of them.
The reason the articles of impeachment are so constructed is to create maximum consensus and avoid the creation of poison pills. Instead of having āimpeachmentā be only as strong as its weakest link, the articles are siloed so that only the strongest arguments are forwarded to the Senate to be tried.
One of the articles of impeachment Hurd is likely to vote on will be obstruction of justice related to the presidentās refusal to allow key witnessesāMick Mulvaney, Mike Pompeo, Mike Pence, Rick Perry, and Mark Esper, among themāto testify before the House impeachment inquiry.
How in the world could Hurd not vote in favor of such an article of impeachment?
Hurd saysāright thereāthat āThereās also a lot we do not know.ā
Why do we not know it? Because the people in a position to deliver the most complete evidence have been shielded from testifying by the president of the United States.
Ask yourself: If this bungling scheme which undermined Americaās national securityāHurdās words, not mineāhad a perfectly innocent explanation, then why wouldnāt the president allow his advisors to testify to it?
The fact that Trump has not allowed them to testify is, all on its own, an obstruction into the Houseās constitutionally-sanctioned overview of the executive.
If Hurd truly believes the things he saidāthat this is serious, that what the president did was not good, that there are too many facts we do not knowāthen he would seem to have no choice but to vote in favor of an article of impeachment for obstruction of justice.
Because at the end of the day, there are only three logically consistent views available for House members:
The president did absolutely nothing wrong.
The president did something very wrong and should be tried for these actions in the Senate.
The president may have done something wrong, but we do not have enough evidence to know definitively because he has obstructed justice.
āItās bad, but we donāt know enough, so we canāt impeachā is a ludicrous position.
And Will Hurd is not a ludicrous man.
So why is he trying to make this position work?
Part of the reason is that Option Number 1āletās call it the Nunes Gambitāis more or less inoperable outside of a four-hour block of Fox New Channel prime-time.
Seventy-percent of Americansāthatās ā70,ā seven-zeroāsay that what Trump did with regard to Ukraine was wrong. This is not a one-off. Fivethirtyeight did a series of questions in which they tried to disentangle partisan judgements from partisan beliefs and the impeachment process. They asked: If it could be proved that Trump withheld military aid in order to force Ukraine to investigate the Bidens, would that be appropriate? And 79 percent said it would not be appropriate.
So nobody outside the base thinks Trump had a āperfectā call with Zelensky.
Option twoāletās call it the Full Montyāhas more support than you might think. Overall support for impeach-and-remove is sitting at 47 percent, at roughly +4 over ādonāt impeach.ā
But when you separate out āstart the impeachment processā from āremove Trump from office,ā support jumps: Itās currently at 52 percent and +10 over ādonāt start impeachment.ā
So the Full Monty isnāt a bad spot to be in right now.
And then thereās the third option, the Modified Limited Hangout, which is where, by normal political lights, Republicans like Will Hurd should be. And this is where the numbers get nuts: 76 percent of voters say the administration should fully cooperate with the impeachment inquiry. Only 18 percent think the administration shouldnāt cooperate.
Why would any Republican be willing to hang their hat on that 18 percent?
The answer, of course, is because they are what we thought they were.
You might remember that back in July, Trump told four Democratic congresswomen that they should āgo backā to the countries they came from. All four of these duly-elected representatives of the American people were U.S. citizens. Three of them were born in the United States.
The public generally thought that what the president said was bad. Very bad.
In a Fox News poll, 63 percent of voters said that Trump had ācrossed the line.ā In a USA Today poll, 59 percent of the public said that Trumpās remarks were āun-American.ā A Quinnipiac poll found 51 percent of people went so far as to say that they actually thought the president of the United States was āa racist.ā
Reminder: It is difficult to get a flat majority of people in this country to agree on anything. The percentage of people who thought that what Trump said was okey-dokey was not far off the percentage who believe in ghosts.
And yet, when the House took up a non-binding resolution to condemn Trumpās attack against their fellow members, only four Republicans voted for it.
Thatās right. Four of them.
This resolution meant nothing. It was simply a demonstration of criticism of the presidentās statement. There was no censure attached to it, no consequences. The public agreed with it. And even then, with the facts completely established, public opinion overwhelmingly against Trump, and the stakes set firmly at nothing, Republicans wouldnāt vote against him.
So when Republicans in the House now claim that, by golly, they just canāt vote for impeachment because the facts are a muddle. Or because the country is divided. Or because the stakes are too highāwhatever. Remember: They refused to vote against Trump six months ago when none of those conditions were at play.
The kicker in all this, of course, is that Will Hurd was one of the four Republican members who did vote for the resolution condemning Trumpās āgo backā to where you came from.
Since then, Hurd has announced his retirement from the House. He has nothing to run for. No skin in the game. On impeachment, he is as free to vote his conscience as a House Republican can possibly be.
And yet, here we are, with Hurd claiming that he will vote against impeachment even though he thinks what Trump did hurt Americaās interests and even though he tacitly admits that the administration has prevented the House from obtaining all of the relevant information.
Maybe Hurd will reconsider once heās confronted with an actual article of impeachment on Trumpās obstruction of justice.
Or maybe weāve reached the end of the line where to be a Republicanāany kind of Republican, even a Trump-skeptic who isnāt running for officeāyou simply have to be all-in on Trump.
No matter what.
