Censure Trump - Rob Horowitz

Censure Trump - Rob Horowitz

“The President of the United States summoned this mob, assembled the mob, and lit the flame of this attack,” said House Republican Conference Chair Liz Cheney in her statement announcing that she would vote to impeach President Trump. "Everything that followed was his doing. None of this would have happened without the President. The President could have immediately and forcefully intervened to stop the violence. He did not. There has never been a greater betrayal by a President of the United States of his office and his oath to the Constitution.”

As the impeachment trial begins in the US Senate today, I am confident that the House Managers, including Rhode Island’s David Cicilline, will make a compelling case that brings Cheney’s powerful and accurate words to life. Yet, all indications are that no matter how effective the presentation and how weak Trump’s defense, there are well short of the 17 Republican senators that would be needed to reach the 67-vote threshold needed for a conviction. And this assumes that all 50 Democratic senators vote to convict.

It is a telling indication that only 5 Republican senators opposed Senator Rand Paul’s motion to short-circuit the trial by first debating and then voting on the constitutionality of holding an impeachment trial of a former president after he has left office.  Despite the fact that most constitutional law scholars believe trying a former president is constitutional and there is precedent in American history for impeachment trials of former office holders, it is a sufficiently open constitutional question to give Republican senators an excuse for voting to acquit.

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Additionally, the plain fact that Trump is no longer in office changes the political incentives as well: why risk alienating the overwhelming majority of Republican primary voters who still support the former president by voting for conviction, when the conviction is less imperative, if still desirable, for the rest of the electorate precisely because he no longer occupies the White House.

The high likelihood that Trump would not be convicted  was one of the reasons that I argued in a previous column written before the House decided to move forward on the matter that while it was well-earned, impeachment was a mistake; that censure and forming a 9/11 style commission was a better option.  This option remains a possibility and should be pursued if the trial does not end with a conviction.
 
A censure can be passed by a majority vote and senators cannot fall back on the argument that it is unconstitutional.  In all likelihood. you would still need 60 votes to overcome a filibuster in order to bring a censure resolution to the floor for a vote. That, however, is not an insurmountable number.   

Senators Susan Collins (R-ME) and Tim Kaine (D-VA) began advocating  for a censure resolution  last week that finds that the former president "gave aid and comfort" to the insurrectionists by "repeatedly lying about the election, slandering election officials, pressuring others to come to Washington for a wild event and encouraging them to come up to Congress,” reported Axios.  The motion includes language taken directly from the 14th Amendment. Since that amendment bars officeholders who have given ‘aid or comfort” to an insurrection from holding future offices  there would have be a possibility depending on court rulings of preventing the former president from running again.

A censure resolution that is passed by the Senate and then passed by the House will provide some measure of accountability for Mr. Trump’s all-out assault on truth and our democracy. It should be followed-up with a bi-partisan Commission modeled after the 9/11 one charged with conducting a comprehensive deep dive into the events leading up  to and including January 6, including providing recommendations for the best way forward.
This combination will not provide the full measure of accountability an impeachment conviction would produce. But let’s not "let the perfect, be the enemy of the good.”

 

Rob Horowitz is a strategic and communications consultant who provides general consulting, public relations, direct mail services and polling for national and state issue organizations, various non-profits, businesses, and elected officials and candidates. He is an Adjunct Professor of Political Science at the University of Rhode Island.