Monday, October 21, 2019

Maybe so, Maybe no !

     I have had a recurrent nightmare over the past few months.  I dream that on the first day after Donald Trump is elected to a second term, he announces the opening of his presidential campaign for a third term. I wake up in a sweat, heart pounding believing that the era of the elected dictator is here-Democracy is dead!   But all of a sudden, I have been sleeping much better for the past week.  A new scenario is taking shape.  My meletonin level has shot back up to normal
     What if the House of Representatives impeaches the president and by constitutional directive, the senate must conduct a trial to determine if Trump is to be removed from office?  Up until this week, I have believed with the rest of the country, that our republican controlled senate would never vote the president out of office. But not so fast Kowalski! Maybe so. Maybe no.   Who could have imagined that Senate Majority leader  Mitch McConnell would lash out so vigorously at his president for his pig-ignorant foreign policy blunder in Syria? Or that former republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney would lead a rebellion pronouncing his own vision of the Republican Party and blasting Trump's withdrawal of troops in Syria as a "bloodstain on the annals of American history".  Even Sen. Lindsey Graham, genetically an [RR] representing South Carolina tweeted, "Pray for our Kurdish allies who have been shamelessly abandoned by the Trump Administration".  All of a sudden the party leadership sees a possibility to  recapture the leadership.  Who would of thuk it?
     With a two-thirds vote needed to convict and remove the president, it gets down to about 20 votes in the senate.  Are they there?  Maybe so, Maybe no.  But the question is now on the table and it may not go away.  The enormous collective embarrassment of true republicans, who believe in the integrity of the office, who believe in fiscal restraint, who believe in an intelligent and measured process of developing policy, who decry payoffs to prostitutes,  may prove to be a force yet to be unleashed.  Yes, the Republican Party may find an electorate that has been lied to every  day of the Trump Administration a mighty force. 
     The thought of coming to the 2020 election with a new ticket, with the possibility even of adding an electable women may be suddenly electrifying, particularly facing a Democratic candidate list that may not gel from their dissension and divisions.  Finally, the leadership of the Republican Party should look upon this opportunity as one that may not come around again. A third term by a sick narcissist will likely result in the destruction of whatever restraining  political institutions remain and whatever international alliances and common allegiances we have built over the past three-quarters of a century, including the UN. Throw in a global warming crisis and the extinction of global fisheries while you pray for your grandchildren.  
     Yes I am sleeping a lot better.  Will it continue?  Maybe so.  Maybe no.  Depending on a Republican Party solution is its own nightmare.