The Daily Beast’s David Lurie reported on Saturday that Republican Senators fear that defending Donald Trump will ultimately cost them their reelection chances come November.
Lurie noted that Republican Senators embraced the rationale of Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-TN) that Trump’s fate should be left up to the voters in the 2020 election
As Alexander explained his vote to block witnesses with the “American people should decide what to do about what [Trump] did,” Lurie added that particular explanation has become the GOP’s main talking point — and that it will be problematic for GOP candidates.
“Other Republican senators seemed attracted by Alexander’s rhetoric, and echoed it today before joining him to vote in favor of a sham trial that will inevitably end with Trump’s acquittal. Florida Sen. Marco Rubio intoned that “voters themselves can hold the President accountable in an election,” while Ohio Sen. Rob Portman declaimed that the ‘American people will have the opportunity to have their say at the ballot box.’” he wrote. “Yet Alexander’s two weak arguments are directly at odds with one another. If Alexander and his fellow Republicans have chosen to abdicate their constitutional duty to pass judgment on Trump’s wrongdoing, and to hand that responsibility over to the voters, it then follows that they should have deferred to the demand of the overwhelming majority of voters to hear Bolton’s testimony, as reflected in poll after poll.”
That, Lurie argued, is likely to be a problem for GOP lawmakers who will be on the ballot in November.
“While Alexander is leaving the Senate, his Republican colleagues who will remain in the world’s greatest deliberative body will have to explain their conduct to the voters, many of them this November when they appear on the ballot together with the president in whose service they just undermined the Constitution,” he explained before warning, “We will see what verdict the electorate issues.”
You can read the entire report HERE.
