Kudos to Mitt Romney

Senator Mitt Romney (R-Utah) just broke with the Republican party to vote for the removal of Donald Trump from the presidency. pic.twitter.com/wF2jM1BQb2

— Mother Jones (@MotherJones) February 5, 2020

Although he is just one Republican, and will, perforce, be on Trump's shit list for life, I think Senator Romney expressed his decision in the most effective of terms: it's about his own conscience, his own oath, and the judgment of history. Of course, one voice doesn't change that acquittal is still likely--but by registering his dissent from the weakest of possible positions*, he accomplished looking like a person of strong principle.

This will earn him some daggers. (But he has expressed his opinions about Trump before.) It's worth noting that some Republicans will now claim he never was a real Republican, when he was the party's 2012 presidential contender.

Of course, he isn't up for election this year, and arguably, a Democrat like Doug Jones, up for re-election in a red state, has a harder political calculus. But what is the point of holding office if you can't take a stand when it matters?


* The weakest of positions, as expressed by Alexander and Collins, to the effect that Trump will learn from all this, has to be the most foolish imaginable. How does Trump learn from anything when he doesn't even grasp that what he had done was wrong?

Alabama Dougies, Moore is Nay Nay

I was on pins and needles with this one, folks, and felt fully resigned to the idea that maybe, there were people who were just great with voting for a potential pedo, but a really good guy who will work hard for the people of Alabama has apparently won in that special senate election, and Roy Moore, who is a terrible person, hasn't conceded because Jesus hasn't told him he lost yet, or something. Anyway, I think that a day when the prosecutor of the Birmingham church bombers and the Olympic Park bomber wins over a person who seemed to be backed by people who might have been pro-segregation and pro-abortion clinic bombing, is a good day.

See, I have thought that Yo'anti-Semite-y Sam was a weird cartoon of conservatism, and not actually a qualified candidate, since well before this sub-genius ever ran for the Senate. I don't get how Steve Bannon decided this wanker was his wanker, but mostly because I am "anti-having wankers for candidates" in the first damn place. How Donald Trump threw himself into supporting Moore at the last gasp should actually be embarrassing for him. He supported Strange in the primary, who was at the very least, a not-screwed-up individual that certainly never grandstanded about the Decalogue whilst being about adolescent upskirts. He went in for Moore well after the damaging sexual assault allegations. And the whole special election never would have taken place if he had not tapped the already-compromised during the campaign Sen. Jeff Sessions for his Attorney General. 

Trump is all over how a loss of a Senate seat for Republicans became possible. But the voter turnout of POC voters, especially women, is what made it happen.  And this despite ongoing attempts to deny the franchise to POC voters in Alabama.