The decision to enter the public phase of the impeachment inquiry happened along partisan lines, but I think that has a lot more to do with what the Republican party is right now, than what Democrats intended to do. In the whistleblower report and what we very well understand to be a partial summary, not a word-for-word transcript, of the July 25th call between President Trump and Ukraine President Zelenskyy, there had been enough of a picture of the famous "quid pro quo", a clear suggestion that Trump's foreign policy was conditioned upon favors related to his re-election campaign, that it strongly merited looking into.
Pelosi stated that no one came to congress in the hopes of impeaching a president--I don't know this is the case. The 2018 midterms saw a major victory for Democrats I believe because it was hoped that they would be a check on this president. We can't forget Rep. Rashida Tlaib and her cry to "Impeach the motherfucker already". Knowing full well that a deeply divided congress and this freaking president are what they are, impeachment was definitely in the cards in a way that meaningful legislation was not, and savvy voters had to know that. We are looking at evidence of extortion, solicitation of a bribe, and a request of foreign assistance with the 2020 election, evidenced not only by the "perfect phone call" summary (whose missing minutes we now know are likely a bit more damning) but the testimony of witnesses who know that the aid to Ukraine was stopped, and that the policy was to lean on Ukraine for an "investigation" of Hunter Biden--or at least the appearance of one.
And the Republicans have chosen to see none of it. Just as you could go through any dozen of them earlier this year asking if they had taken the time to read the Mueller report, and find they had not. While we are not looking at a "coup" (Great galloping ghosts, did any of the Tea Party/Freedom Caucus smoothbrains ever think to read the copy of the Constitution they are all supposedly secreting in their pockets to realize that impeachment is in the Constitution? It is not a coup--it is a fully sanctioned constitutional process.) I certainly think we have evidence of chickens.
I am calling the Republican party" chickens". Like, actually, that's insulting to the noble gallus domesticus. The very day this vote took place, the "quid pro quo"--the standard that Trump himself tried to set for whether his perfect phone call was indeed perfect, was again confirmed. While Republican lawmakers have stood in great indignation that the Democrats are supposedly trying to roll back the 2016 election, the President himself is trapped in conditioning his foreign policy on covering up the assistance he assuredly did get from Russia in 2016, and trying to affect the 2020 election as well.
Trump is president and not one single Democrat voting for impeachment denies the legality of his swearing-in (even if they have serious reservations about how seriously he took that oath), and the founders never intended the president to be above the law. We don't have kings, here. And perhaps if we did, given the nature of this one, heads would need to, perchance, roll. If our loyalist demi-royalists aren't fucking scaredy-cats worried to death of what it means to be in Trump's cross hairs, or what it might mean to find that Trump isn't a fucking flotation device in case of a real emergency, let's note for the record he isn't above dining with his House buddies and promising who knows what--or appearing to bribe his friends in the Senate who will ultimately try him.
Scared, corrupt, and indifferent to one's oath of office: Republicans seem to think they understand the politics of a "partisan" impeachment. I think they should look again. The facts are not their friends here. The facts will be known, and in some cases, Trump will even be the source of the most damning parts, because he simply doesn't understand what right and wrong are. Are GOP politicians so certain that their voters will stay forever fooled? Are they so in love with Trump--the damaged albatross around their necks, moldy and maggoty, that they don't know he's unhealthy for our body politic?
I guess we will know in the unfolding of events. This vote did not show that Democrats were rabid for impeachment though, so much as it showed how much Republicans are loath to face a truly transparent investigation--and after all their protests for transparency, too.
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