They'll all get primaried if the impeach him.

they may avoid getting "primaried" as the GOP voter attention span is challenged beyond a scant few months.

His strongest supporters who make up the GOP base have built up a cult of personality around him. They'll lose their shit if the Republicans move to impeach.

They'll try to control and absorb his base, just like they attempted with the teabaggers

Rush and Fox will tell them to obey the new God - President Pence - and they will do just that. A lot of Trump supporters are a lot like Trump - big talk - not much after that. They'll support Pence - if only to beat the evil liberals.

Resistance is futile. We are Borg.

At first, it looked like you wrote assassinated.

(I think I'm kidding.......)

...to employ her 2nd amendment solutions?

(Gallows humor - don't everybody jump all over me.)

(more gallows 'humor'(?))

Just as we've had to. The link to Russia will not play well if collusion is exposed. And the emolument clause violations would be very easy to understand.

I'd say there is a less than 10% chance that impeachment happens.

Too much credit for their concern about the opinions of their voters. First and foremost they care about their own power - and this guy is way too disruptive and hard to get along with for anyone. Just weeks ago people were still talking about how Trump was going dismantle the entire Republican party. I doubt that's something that McConnell & Co. have forgotten - and now it will be time for those weasels to pull a reversal on the biggest weasel who is actually a political novice.

And he will resign. They won't have to publicly impeach him.

He'll just say he's going to spend more time with his family or something.

Especially if it is a serious crime...like, I don't know - TREASON!!!

They'll hold it over his head for a while, but he won't stop being a dumbass, so they'll have to convince him to resign.

Once the hearings on these cabinet positions begin, he will begin to understand what he's up against.

Is that the senate republicans will start running for president around January 22nd.

It would be a big feather in their cap if they 'stood against the party leadership' to ferret out corruption.

There will be some up and coming senator trying to make a name for 2020. If there really is something that they've unearthed, and it comes out later, they'll sink with the Trump ship.

It's just a matter of time. Just like Iran-Contra.

Imagine just how much Little Marco Rubio would enjoy sinking the Trump ship!!

I imagine Rubio would love to jump at the chance, but Cotton wrote the letter to Iran demonstrating that he prizes ambition above all else.

My Gawd...what an unlikely source to have to depend upon!! I thought him a traitor with that Iran letter... You're right, though - in addition to being Russia/Putin hater - his ambition is second to none (even Cruz's) in the Senate.

...and his mirror reflection......

One of those things.

Nuclear proliferation, backing off on popular promises, etc, the Republicans could team up with the media to blast him with bad publicity, followed by a seemingly inevitable impeachment proceeding.

...how much of their base are true believers in the Trump Cult.

They'll just find someone more insane to run in 2020 if Trump is successfully impeached.

Though Charles Manson may be out of prison by then! (And 84, I think - but that might work for them)

But Trump's cult following didn't vote for Pence; they voted for Trump. I suspect many of them would not turn out to vote in 2020 if Republicans lead an effort to impeach Trump.

Allow Pence to become president, then run for it in 2020 and 2024 (if they dump donny sooner, Pence wouldn't be eligible in 2024.) Plus, Dems may have a Congressional majority that the GOP can blame it all on (remember, even though the GOP would be helping out, facts don't matter to them.) So they'd twelve years of White House control, instead of four with donny, who will likely be un-reelectable after four years.

their heartless bills destroying the social safety net. As long as he does what he wants they will keep him. As soon as he is a liability or does something they don't like, then they will cut him.
Impeachment will freeze stuff from being done so they will use him 1st!

It might make sense if he plans on running for President in the future. Though I don't see him being able to get through a Republican Primary if he was behind a Trump impeachment.

He wasn't Hillary.

Last edited Tue Dec 20, 2016, 06:07 PM - Edit history (1)

Because God help this country and world if not...

I really believe that's where this is going. Far from great - but the guy is nowhere as crazy as Trump/Bannon/Flynn

John McCain, Rand Paul, Little Marco Rubio, Lindsey Graham - and Ted Cruz probably couldn't wait to sink their fangs into this unprepared, ruthless backstabber!

flattered, but, please, no.

If they cut him loose they'll be hell to pay with their base who crave authoritarians and love being in an abusive relationship

And Rush and Fox News will tell them to accept it - and in time they'll obey. At least Pence isn't Hillary, they'll think - and he must be good if the orange Fuhrer chose him.

It would likely destroy the Republican Party or decimate Republican control of Congress at the very least. Dems would be wise to watch quietly from the sidelines if this were to happen.

You are assuming that the Senate will vote to convict Trump. If i was a democratic senator I may not be inclined to convict Trump. This is the Republicans mess and i wouldn't help them clean it up. Can you imagine a pissed off Donald Trump spending his first two years in office going after the people who impeached him.

LOVE to convict Trump of any crime they could be proved he committed!! I know how much I would.

...and dare Congress to do something about it. The GOP trying to eliminate Trump is a fantasy. Nothing he does would make them want to; his supporters would revolt, and the McConnells and Ryans--and Pences--are physically afraid of their wrath; and if push comes to shove, as I said, Trump would just call out the army. And I have no doubt whatever that they'd do what he told them to. Trump would be the President, and Congress is hated by every sector of our society. If a real crisis came along, no one would be on their side. My God--most Dems would support Trump over Ryan and McConnell...

unless and until they know they'll pay too high a political cost for not doing so. keep in mind that most of the republicans in congress are from very safe republican districts (thanks to gerrymandering) meaning a *lot* of *republicans* are going to have to hate donnie before that happens.

democrats hating donnie is, sadly, almost completely irrelevant to the impeachment process.

either donnie needs to do something salacious and the video goes viral, or he has to do something politically suicidal, like veto a republican tax cut (and even he's not crazy enough to do the latter, at least).


republicans are certainly not going to remove him just because they're worried. in fact, right now, they're thinking he'll rubber stamp everything they've dreamed of, so impeachment is the last thing they're thinking about.

In the 70's the Republican Congressmen lined up against Richard Nixon.

Just wait until a Trump crime is presented (and it will no doubt be a doozey the way he's begun in transition!)

easy and dems would have helped them.

That may have put Hillary in there, instead.

first, there was a strong democratic majority in the house, and a decent one in the senate. yes, some republicans finally gave up on nixon, but that was in large part because they couldn't stop democrats from impeaching him.

second, the media was relentless in covering the slow trickle of devastating news, to the point where nixon's popularity was impossibly low -- down to 24% right before he resigned. he was politically dead and supporting him in the face of the ongoing scandal was simply untenable.

third, the republican party is way partisan now compared to then, never mind somehow far more powerful. if watergate happened today, they wouldn't blink an eye. in fact, donnie did worse, publically soliciting foreign agents to commit espionage against americans and using the ensuing contraband for his own personal benefit; and their reaction was "meh. shrug. we won. get over it."


so, like i said, donnie's high crime and misdemeanor would have to be something salacious or something politically suicidal. nothing short of that would do it. as long as his popularity is above 40% and he doesn't completely screw over the republican agenda, he's safe.


fundamentally, he's got to piss off a whole lot of *republicans*. the rest of us don't matter.

Produces multiple communications directly from Trump's camp to Putin surrogates from during the campaign - and even direct communications between Trump and Putin (wiretapped, hacked, etc...)

The public could be whipped up into a frenzy about that (and it may well exist)

He's alienated the CIA and the Secret Service - I don't think the military is going to respect him much either. The Republicans in the 70's voted for Nixon's impeachment - and they will impeach the far less accomplished and more dangerous Trump. McCain, Graham...these guys are not afraid of Trump. Trump is a wannabe nobody that everyone is suddenly treating like he's some invincible entity. He's a fraud, a cheat, and a JOKE!! He doesn't even scare Saturday Night Live (or that former Miss Universe).

...if he vetos bills meant to gut social security, repeal Medicaid, privatize Medicare, defeat net neutrality, destroy the EPA, increase the flow of funds to favored individuals and companies, reduce taxes on the very rich while increasing them on everyone else, and the rest of the Randian program the Rethugs have in store for us. Drumpf will be there every step of the way as long as they allow him to bend foreign policy in a manner that benefits Putin and enriches himself.

Like he can't help himself from doing.

As long as he does that, they won't rock the boat.

He can't help himself. The man has not a shred of discipline.

the same gop that put up such a STELLAR opposition to trump in the primaries?

And Trump would have to do more than he did the GOP debates - which was basically a succession of one-liner insults meant for comic ridicule. That won't be much of a defense when impeachment is being contemplated - nor will his dim-witted tweets be.

They want to get through as much of their agenda as they can. They know that the backlash will be horrendous when they gut social security and medicare. So, I think the plan is to blame Trump for gutting SS and Medicare and then impeach him. Then they will tell the base that Trump was the problem and know its too late to fix it even though they want to.

Your blame the trump game strategy hypothesis does make a lot of sense.

And this is easily shown to be on purpose? GOP will never recover from this. I know. People have said this before. But nothing on this scale has ever been done before.

And we earthlings may not either!

He still has a lot of judicial and executive appointments to make.

They need him to sell movement conservativism to the dumbass yokels who voted for him.

Wait until they have to actually govern and all these idiots he's put in place are as awful as expected! The shit will hit the fan - Don the Con will be pointing the finger at everyone in the party but himself and the other GOP leaders will soon resemble a lynch mob - itching to cut this idiot loose!

Republicans need Trump to sell their crap to the base.

He's the most popular Republican alive today, amongst Republicans.

Rush, etc. tells them to buy. Trump is bound to take a fall from grace - a "populist" movement led by an assortment of billionaires, Generals, Goldman Sachs and Oil company executives. What a f--cking joke! The wall has now been downgraded to a fence, no lock her up - it goes on and on. He's going to do almost nothing he promised to do!

Not even their own voters. They could give a shit what those serfs think! Representative government is not something they practice, nor do their followers demand. They will do what they're told - and accept the new boss. Jeez - they accepted George W. when it was clear he hadn't a clue about what was going on. They could've dumped him and they would have followed Darth Vader Cheney, who was in control anyway. Pence will be an easy sell - Drumpf picked him!

but I doubt they will risk the wrath of the trumpkins. No one likes to get primaried.

They'll have plenty of time to sell Pence. He's pretty bad himself "tobacco never killed anyone" - "a causing link between smoking and cancer has never been proven"

Those are the kind of deplorable statements the GOP can definitely get excited about campaigning with.

...to "No one has any balls," IMO. All they care about is keeping their cushy, too-well-paid, very part-time government jobs. Cuz government sucks so much, dontcha know.

And very part-time indeed!

Then it will be time for fealty in his revived cult of personality: just like Shrub.
Or he will blow a cardio blood vessel and go cold.

To do it quickly - and he's already providing them with ammunition with his endless conflicts and profiteering schemes.

With our weakened state in 2017 and degraded state after that, we'll be easy pickings for them.

Perhaps 2 or 3 months after he assumes office

But I think he's a lot more dangerous to them than they expect. He truly does have the bully pulpit in a sense that nobody has had it before. He can get his minions to primary anybody in any office if they dare go against him. He's the kind of guy who would have absolutely no problem calling these dudes out by name and siccing his dogs on them.

That's why you have to hope that he has a little bit of an independent streak and actually wants to do at least some of the things he brought up that were good.

But the reality is that he's just a dumb puppet with no knowledge, no experience and no business being in this job. The John Birch society and the neocons are going to run roughshod over this dude and it's going to be painful, extremely painful for us.

Why should they wait for him to strangle them one by one? They're in power now - they couldn't give two shits about what any voters think (even their own). They will tell them what to think - and they will obey - the Repub voters will just be so tickled that liberals have been denied the White House!

They will throw him under the bus in a heartbeat if he screws up enough and claim that he isn't a true rethug, he is liberal.

In the mean time, they will happily watch him wreck the government, because they know that they can claim they are not responsible for him. He is a perfect tool for them.

That is an option they have - to portray him as a liberal who posed as a conservative to get elected (isn't that what he did?)

No republican has ever been able to do in 30 plus years: defeat the mighty hillary.

What happened to all the brilliant political analysis DU was once known for?

Probably impeach and then jail him to shut him up. Certainly enough criminal behavior if they want to go after him.

But I sure would not get on an airplane with him either.

Wonder if he'll just keep the Trump plane and forego Air Force One.

There have been predictions on DU that Trump would drop out during the primaries, that he would drop out or be forced out before the convention, that he would drop out or be forced out during the convention, that he would drop out or be forced out before election day, that he would drop out or be forced out before inauguration day.

Fantasies. Each and every one of these predictions.

And so too are the predictions that repubs are geared up to impeach Trump. Trump got more votes than all of the House members combined. Any repub that goes after Trump will be certain to face a primary opponent. And if the repubs are good at anything, its party discipline -- they are going to blow apart over an attempt to remove Trump that would only succeed if more than a third of the repub senators joined with every Democratic and independent senator voted to convict after the House voted to impeach. That's simply not going to happen.

It's alright, it's alright.

magic pony is going to be delivered to me.

I guess "long" is a relative term. I'm guessing it's four years.

with some charge even his minions will find offensive

Don't think anyone has to manufacture anything for Don the Con... but investigating him would undoubtedly produce all sorts of creepy crawly illegal/even treasonous things.

They never do that.

They will be indefensible - and some will greatly offend him by not siding with him... He will go to war with them (as he has before) - and they will realize it's either him or then.

Then they will let the orange man go.

because being the outrageous windbag that he is, he says all the outlandish things in public that so many republicans can only whisper about behind closed doors. Other than the Russia connection, most of them are creaming their jeans over someone like Trump who talks so openly about all the wrong values, horrible values that most Republicans in Congress abide to.

Is going to prove too obvious and problematic...and they will not be able to get along with him - he is such a loose cannon. They can bask in their victory (stolen) with him now - but once the romance is over they'll soon be at each other's throat again. Pence is one of them - Trump is not.

while the MSM will be focusing on his daily twit-storm or other idiocy the Republican-controlled House and Senate will quietly be dismantling all the social and environmental progress of the last 70 or 80 years.

No, they'll keep their Useful Idiot.

not even up to that! He'll blow it. He's too thin-skinned, undisciplined and ignorant to handle the pressures when things get hot - and, since these idiots CANNOT GOVERN - things are going to be a mess pretty quickly, and orange man cannot take the heat and will not ever take any blame, so he will attack everyone else - Dems and Repukes that oppose any element of what his idiotic "team" is doing.

In a word, King Trump is UNMANAGEABLE.

while they rape and pillage America.

they love america.

Was you, Dionysus, BELIEVING that Trump just happened to beat the Exit Poll margin of error in 26 out of 28 states (same odds as flipping a coin 28 times and getting heads 26 times!! - 1 in 200,000 - in Presidential election terms - the next such election result should happen 800,000 years from now!! (because - in the swing states only - a bunch of totally unaccounted for white guys crawled out from under their rocks and voted for Trump - funny - not even Trump's internal polls were aware of their existence - could it be called the Bigfoot Trump phenomenon?

You read that Obama became the first President to use the red phone hot-line to Russia - just before election night - threatening Putin if he were to hack our election, that we might respond militarily...

Do you think Obama would have made that call if he didn't know it was possible for them to hack our election - or do think he was worried about one more wikileak email dump??

It's incumbent on YOU - to explain the unadjusted exit polls. They are based on behavioral SCIENCE - Statistics DON'T LIE!!!!

able to hack hundreds if not more, voting machines. They wouldn't have been able to install the modems without tons of people noticing, or being complicit.

The vote tabulators - contrary to what Comey said to Congress - ARE online and are hackable. Here's the ES&S software:

http://essvote.com/products/1/1/Tabulators/DS200

Here's a brand new article explaining their vulnerabilities:

https://d3n8a8pro7vhmx.cloudfront.net/recountnow/pages/34/attachments/original/1481829147/DS200_wireless_security-2-2-Jim-March.pdf?1481829147

The first known electronic election hack occurred in Volusia County Florida during the 2000 Presidential race. This vote tabulator hack - known at the "Hursti Hack" allowed George W. Bush to separate enough from Al Gore (by shifting 16,000 votes out of Gore's total, and adding 2,000 to Bush's) to be called (by his first cousin) the President-elect - a status he maintained throughout the recount -always allowing him to act like the victim - with Gore trying to steal something that was his. Hacking is far more sophisticated now than it was 16 years ago, while these machines remain nearly as vulnerable. wikipedia's link:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volusia_error

its possible we could still get Bernie in!

And Trump could care less because he has russian money. So, I agree. They will get rid of him.

In fact, I suspect that they will wind up holding impeachment over his head to get him to do what they want. It should be an interesting power play that will go on behind the scenes.

hide behind to do their dirty work.'

send dump out to tweet while they bring down the Planet.

Same in the Senate. If there is a trial don't they need 67 votes? I doubt there would be 67 votes. What would the Democrats do? Stay on the sideline and let it play out, I assume.

Short of him launching a nuclear attack after one of his properties gets attacked, I don't see the Repubicans impeaching him.

What you would end up with is a neutered *Rump with a congress that ends up doing nothing. If they impeach him it will make life hell for Congress. He might just petulant and veto every bill that comes out of congress.

Who knows.

They can accomplish with one of their own - Mike Pence. As far as convicting in the Senate, my guess is there's probably about 99 votes in the Senate that would secretly love dispose of the mad orange man.

up, the Democrats are not going to help Pence get the Presidency. I think for an impeachment to happen, (not the nuclear attack), for Democrats to support it, the Repubicans would have to accept a dual impeachment of both Trump and Pence AND either a vice president Tim Kaine or Hillary Clinton.

Pence will SUCK - but he's not as likely to blow up the planet, or follow Putin's orders.

I'm sticking with this assessment!