The Senate should get the impeachment trial over with

Matt Vespa:
The Senate Republican playbook should be put House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on mute and get this trial started. Pelosi and the Democrats have no say in the matter. They don’t. And by withholding the articles of impeachment against President Trump because they know it faces certain death in the Republican Senate creates a new constitutional crisis of its own. This isn’t about a fair trial. As Wall Street Journal columnist Kimberley Strassel noted, a trial would only further degrade their position in the polls on this impeachment push. It was never popular from the start, and now it’s underwater nationally. It’s especially not popular in the key swing states that Democrats have to win in 2020. I think Democrats know this is a fiasco, the smart ones at least, but they made a 2018 promise to the base to impeach the president. They have to keep it. Strassel noted that Pelosi isn’t a scrub when it comes to political strategy; she can hang in there with McConnell. But the goal of this whole circus is to keep the idea of impeachment alive. It’s “rolling impeachment,” as Strassel noted. And it’s cancerous to constitutional order, but also the Senate GOP could enable it if they think the end goal is to nab a fair trial (via WSJ):

Republicans dismiss Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s refusal to transmit the impeachment articles to the Senate as a weak stunt. They do so at the peril of both the Constitution and President Trump. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell may be a master tactician, but Mrs. Pelosi is no slouch.
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How would it benefit Democrats for the Senate to conduct an efficient and solemn proceeding? The House inquiry was a farce, riddled with procedural gamesmanship and shifting definitions of “high crimes.” A serious Senate trial would only further highlight the weakness of the House case. It would also require Democratic presidential contenders including Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren and Amy Klobuchar to abandon the stump and return to Washington for most of January, on the eve of the crucial Iowa caucuses—or else shirk their senatorial duty.

Mrs. Pelosi has understood from the start that the inevitable outcome was acquittal. There won’t be 20 Republican votes to remove Mr. Trump from office. So why hasten the president’s vindication? If the goal of this exercise all along was to damage Mr. Trump’s prospects for re-election, why wouldn’t Democrats want to hold an unconsummated impeachment over his head for as long as politically possible?

Think of it as “rolling” impeachment. Every day the Senate doesn’t hold a trial, Mrs. Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer are free to argue that the process is rigged. They are already claiming that the Senate’s Republican “jurors” have abandoned impartiality, are actively working with Mr. Trump to cover up his crimes, and are afraid to hold a trial.

This bears no relation to reality and is the height of cheek given the House circus. But it’s fodder for the press corps and it may resonate with some voters. More important, it puts daily pressure on Senate Republican moderates to break with Mr. McConnell.
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They really do not have to wait for her to deliver the articles of impeachment.  They are already in the House records and the Senate should just go ahead and start the trial when they Congress is back in session.  It would disrupt the Democrat senators running for the nomination at an inconvenient time thus giving them an incentive to get the thing over with quickly too.

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