McConnell’s Take

I thought I’d pass along this snippet of Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell’s Wall Street Journal op-ed:

There is a modern reflex to demand total satisfaction from every news cycle. But impeachment is not some final moral tribunal. It is a specific tool with a narrow purpose: restraining government officers. The instant Donald Trump ceased being the president, he exited the Senate’s jurisdiction.

I respect senators who reached the opposite answer. What deserve no respect are claims that constitutional concerns are trivialities that courageous senators would have ignored.

One House manager who lauded the Constitution when the trial began now derides it as “a technicality.” Another called this pivotal question “a loophole.” Talking heads fumed that senators had let legal niceties constrain us. I even heard that only senators who voted for conviction had any right to abhor the violence. That’s antithetical to any notion of American justice. Liberals said they condemned the former president’s rules-be-damned recklessness. But many apparently cannot resist that same temptation.

He concludes:

Here’s what the scheduling critics are really saying: Senate Republicans should have followed a rushed House process with a light-speed Senate sham. They think we should have shredded due process and ignited a constitutional crisis in a footrace to outrun our loss of jurisdiction.

This selective disregard for rules and norms is a civic disease that is spreading through the political left. Senate Democrats relished the legislative filibuster and used it frequently when they were the minority party. Now only two of them pledge to respect it. Majority Leader Chuck Schumer has threatened Supreme Court justices by name, and other Democrats submitted a brief demanding the court rule their way or be “restructured.” As recently as September, fewer than half of Democrats professed confidence that elections are free and fair. In November, that number shot up to more than 90%—because they liked the result.

The nation needs real constitutional champions, not fair-weather institutionalists. The Senate’s duty last week was clear. It wasn’t to guarantee a specific punishment at any cost. Our job was to defend the Constitution and respect its limits. That is what our acquittal delivered.

I cannot judge what is in people’s hearts and I believe it would be immoral of me to evaluate their actions based on my assessment of their motives.