‘Out on a limb’: Inside the Republican reckoning over Trump’s
possible impeachment
By Robert Costa and
Philip Rucker
October 6 at 4:55 PM
A torrent of impeachment developments has triggered a reckoning in the
Republican Party, paralyzing many of its officeholders as they weigh their
political futures, legacies and, ultimately, their allegiance to a president who has
held them captive.
President Trump’s efforts to pressure a foreign power to target a domestic
political rival have driven his party into a bunker, with lawmakers bracing for an
extended battle led by a general whose orders are often confusing and
contradictory.
Should the House impeach Trump, his trial would be in the Senate, where the
Republican majority would decide his fate. While GOP senators have engaged in
hushed conversations about constitutional and moral considerations, their
calculations at this point are almost entirely political.
Even as polling shows an uptick in support nationally for Trump’s impeachment,
his command over the Republican base is uncontested, representing a stark
warning to any official who dares to cross him.
Across the country, most GOP lawmakers have responded to questions about
Trump’s conduct with varying degrees of silence, shrugged shoulders or pained
defenses. For now, their collective strategy is simply to survive and not make any
sudden moves.
This account of the anxiety gripping the Republican Party is based on interviews
with 21 lawmakers, aides and advisers, many of whom spoke on the condition of
anonymity to talk candidly.
Trump has been defiant in his defense, insisting his conduct with foreign leaders
has been “perfect” and claiming a broad conspiracy by the Democratic Party, the
intelligence community and the national media to remove him from office. Yet
few Republican lawmakers have been willing to fully parrot White House talking
points because they believe they lack credibility or fret they could be contradicted
by new discoveries.
“Everyone is getting a little shaky at this point,” said Brendan Buck, who was
counselor to former House speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.). “Members have gotten
out on a limb with this president many times only to have it be cut off by the
president. They know he’s erratic, and this is a completely unsteady and
developing situation.”
Republican officials feel acute pressure beyond Trump. The president’s allies on
talk radio, Fox News Channel and elsewhere in conservative media have been
abuzz with conspiratorial talk of a “deep state” coup attempt and accusations that
House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam B. Schiff (D-Calif.) and House
Democrats are corrupting the impeachment process.
The GOP’s paralysis was on display this past week in Templeton, Iowa, where a
voter confronted Sen. Joni Ernst (R) at a town hall meeting Thursday over her
silence about Trump’s conduct.
“Where is the line?” Iowa resident Amy Haskins asked in frustration. “When are
you guys going to say, ‘Enough,’ and stand up and say, ‘You know what? I’m not
backing any of this.’ ”
“I can say, ‘Yea, nay, whatever,’ ” Ernst replied. “The president is going to say
what the president is going to do.”
Trump’s extraordinary public request that China investigate 2020 Democratic
presidential candidate Joe Biden — adding to his previous pressure campaign on
Ukraine — has sparked divergent reactions among other Republican senators,
including over whether the president was being serious when he delivered his
plea.
Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah), the most outspoken of his colleagues, tweeted
Friday: “By all appearances, the President’s brazen and unprecedented appeal to
China and to Ukraine to investigate Joe Biden is wrong and appalling.”
By contrast, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) dismissed it as a joke. “I don’t know if
that’s a real request or him just needling the press, knowing that you guys were
going to get outraged by it,” Rubio told reporters.
On Saturday, Trump on Twitter swatted back at Romney by calling him “a
pompous ‘ass’ who has been fighting me from the beginning” — a flashing signal
to other Republicans that there would be consequences to speaking out against
the president.
Colin Powell, who served as secretary of state under George W. Bush, said during
a panel sponsored by the New Albany Community Foundation in Ohio that “the
Republican Party has got to get a grip on itself. Republican leaders and members
of the Congress . . . are holding back because they’re terrified of what will happen
[to] any one of them if they speak out.”
Some House Republicans have tried to offer a more forceful defense than their
Senate compatriots.
But House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy’s shaky appearance last weekend on
CBS’s “60 Minutes” was widely panned, even among senior GOP aides, and raised
questions about whether he was up to the task of protecting Trump. The
California Republican falsely accused his interviewer, Scott Pelley, of
misrepresenting a key phrase in the transcript of Trump’s July 25 call with the
Ukrainian president.
But some Trump aides privately said the president likes the messages sent by
surrogates such as McCarthy and White House policy adviser Stephen Miller,
who are willing to sit for a grilling and disparage the media, according to two
Republicans close to the president.
Rep. Mark Meadows (R-N.C.), an informal Trump adviser, insisted the president
had done “nothing wrong” and denounced those who act “as if he’s guilty until
he’s proven innocent.”
“For Republicans to get weak, well, they have a very short memory,” Meadows
said, noting that his colleagues facing competitive primary races will need
Trump’s support.
Former Republican senator Jeff Flake, a Trump antagonist, said his former
colleagues believe the foreign leader interactions under investigation in the
House represent “new territory” compared with past challenges, including the
Russia investigation.
“There is a concern that he’ll get through it and he’ll exact revenge on those who
didn’t stand with him,” Flake said. “There is no love for the president among
Senate Republicans, and they aspire to do more than answer questions about his
every tweet and issue. But they know this is the president’s party and the
bargain’s been made.”
The responses from most Republicans have infuriated and distressed Democrats,
who consider Trump’s conduct a brazen and unconstitutional abuse of power.
“My Republican colleagues’ silence seems unsustainable and inexcusable, given
the threat to our national security as well as the integrity of our democratic
institutions,” said Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.).
The frenetic reactions underscore how Republicans are navigating this moment
on their own, without direction from the White House or clear guidance from the
congressional leadership.
Many Republicans also said in interviews last week that Trump’s ability to
nominate and confirm dozens of conservative federal judicial nominees and pass
an overhaul of the tax code makes it harder to argue to their voters that he is now
a burden on the party’s policy agenda.
This is not the first such crossroads, of course. Republicans largely stood behind
Trump in 2016 after the release of the “Access Hollywood” tape on which he
bragged of sexual assault, as well as during the darkest days of the Russia
investigation and in the wake of racist comments.
“It feels like we’ve been constantly moving the line,” said Tom Rath, a GOP fixture
in New Hampshire. “We say, ‘Don’t cross this line.’ Okay, you crossed it. So,
‘Don’t cross this line.’ We’re finally at a point where patience is exhausted, reason
is exhausted and, quite frankly, the voters are exhausted.”
A Republican strategist who is close with several senators and spoke on the
condition of anonymity to share a candid assessment called the situation “a
disaster.” This consultant has been advising clients to “say as little as possible”
about impeachment developments to buy time.
Since last month’s whistleblower complaint sparked the impeachment inquiry, 48
percent of Americans support impeachment and 46 percent oppose it, according
to an average of polls analyzed by The Washington Post. Among Republicans,
however, 11 percent support impeachment and 86 percent oppose it, the analysis
found.
“There just hasn’t been pushback, and in part it’s because of this perception that
he’s like Rasputin with the base with magic powers,” said GOP consultant Mike
Murphy, a Trump critic.
Fox News personality Tucker Carlson, who is admired by Trump and occasionally
speaks with him, co-wrote an essay in the Daily Caller last week offering a road
map for Republicans, writing that “there’s no way to spin” Trump’s request that a
foreign leader investigate one of his domestic opponents as proper, but that it did
not rise to the level of an impeachable offense.
Veteran party figures said a true break with Trump is possible, but could take
months, if not years. Senate Republicans are taking their cues from Majority
Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), a taciturn operator who has labored to
maintain an uneasy but transactional relationship with Trump.
Though a loyal Republican, McConnell has a history of expressing public concern
with an embattled president in his own party. In 1973, McConnell, then a budding
Kentucky politician, called the Watergate affair “totally repugnant” and
denounced the conduct of President Richard Nixon and some in his
administration, as documented by McConnell biographer John David Dyche.
In a new campaign ad released over the weekend, McConnell remained firmly at
Trump’s side, saying, “The way that impeachment stops is a Senate majority with
me as majority leader.”
Other than Romney and Sen. Ben Sasse (R-Neb.), who also has criticized Trump’s
conduct with Ukrainian and Chinese counterparts, others who might break with
the president include Lamar Alexander of Tennessee, who is retiring next year,
and Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Richard Burr of North Carolina,
according to two top Republicans in close touch with senators.
Still, many more Republicans would have to join them to reach the two-thirds
majority in the upper chamber required to convict the president and remove him
from office.
“Nobody wants to be the zebra that strays from the pack and gets gobbled up by
the lion,” a former senior administration official said in assessing the current
consensus among Senate Republicans. “They have to hold hands and jump
simultaneously … Then Trump is immediately no longer president and the power
he can exert over them and the punishment he can inflict is, in the snap of a
finger, almost completely erased.”
Yet with Washington as polarized as at any time in recent history, political winds
may not blow strongly enough. As long as impeachment is a Democratic priority
driven by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (Calif.), it will be difficult — if not
impossible — for Senate Republicans to get on board, argued Alex Castellanos, a
longtime GOP strategist.
“The more passions swell in Pelosi’s world, the more McConnell will deflate
them,” Castellanos said. Impeachment proceedings, he predicted, will be “an
overhyped movie with an unsatisfying end.”
Rachael Bade and Emily Guskin contributed to this reporta
