From Dahlia Lithwick at SLATE:
Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski Think Donald Trump Is No Longer a Danger
On Wednesday, the Senate [voted] to acquit President Donald Trump of abuse of power and obstruction of Congress following a marathon few days of speeches, half of which came from Republican senators justifying their votes to acquit. Having listened through the hodgepodge of whataboutism, process complaints, and occasional outright fascism, one hesitates to focus on Sens. Lisa Murkowski and Susan Collins because their reputations as GOP “moderates” have always been more a stylist’s branding choice than reality, and because holding Republican women in power to a higher standard than men has never redounded to the benefit of anyone, including women. But when powerful women who should see through the gaslighting instead pick up the proffered gaslighting torch and set small brushfires, it’s worth taking note.
Certainly, the Susan Collins who persuaded herself that Christine Blasey Ford was confused and that Brett Kavanaugh would vote to uphold Roe was never going to get it right about Donald Trump, even before she announced her vote to acquit him. And certainly the Lisa Murkowski who was willing to vote against Kavanaugh was likely destined to capitulate when it came to impeachment. One could nevertheless wish for coherent constitutional arguments. Instead, there were vague and conclusory feelings.
Murkowski wants you to know that she is sad. We know she is sad because it is the word she used to describe that feeling she gets when the branch of government charged with checking the other branch of government wholly abdicates its responsibility to do so. And she emphatically wants you to know that Congress, which has failed to check the executive, is to blame for this failure […] Having excoriated Congress for its failure to check the runaway executive branch, she then announced her vote to refuse to check the runaway executive branch.
You really should read the whole piece at the link above. To summarize the rest: Lisa is having a sad, but none of it is her fault. It’s the fault of the House, all the other senators and the media. It’s everyone’s fault except Sad Lisa’s. The piece also points out that Sad Lisa said it is really up to the voters:
“The president’s name is on ballots that have already been cast,” she announced. “The voters will pronounce a verdict in nine months, and we must trust their judgment.” It is important not to “disenfranchise nearly 63 million Americans and remove him from the ballot,” she said.
What Sad Lisa leaves out is that the GOP in five states cancelled their primaries. Those states are South Carolina, Nevada, Kansas, Arizona and Sad Lisa’s Alaska. They say it’s because it’s not worth the expense, but we know it’s really to appease the orange man baby who can’t stand being challenged by anyone. So, if you know anyone who is going to a town hall meeting with their Rethuglican senator or representative, tell them to ask this question:
If you are so concerned with disenfranchising voters, how do you explain taking away the right of GOP voters in five states to declare their preference for whom they wish to be the Rethuglican nominee for president?
HYSTERICAL RAISINS 
The do nothing politicians and the party loyalists are killing our country. I do hope they sleep well at night. Clearly these women and men are permanently out to lunch. They are never coming back. Five states closing their primaries- how it that legal? You have got to be kidding but I know that you are not. We don’t have a democracy anymore.
Here is a link to the last post by Margaret and Helen. I hope you don’t mind me putting this here. You can edit it out and it will not hurt my feelings.
Helen makes more sense than most of the talking heads on TV. I think we need an old lady channel. Once you go through menopause, you have no filters left, and the truth will be told. Maybe we can call Biddy-TV.
Now that sounds like a great idea for a show. I bet it would be highly rated and terribly funny.
petspeopleandlife, thanks for sharing margaret and helen’s blog with us. i love it almost as much as hysterical raisins!
We should change our names to Margaret and Helen when we go to the home and we are texted each other on the porch.
The focus on, and disappointment with, Murkowski and Collins stems not from the fact that they’re women but from the higher hopes they’ve aroused. Murkowski does sometimes vote against the party, and Collins’s squid-ink schtick (ostentatiously hand-wring and express “concern”, then fall into line for the actual vote) fooled a lot of people for quite a while. Most Republican senators aroused no such false hopes, and thus no such attention.
People had similar hopes about Romney, and in the end he was the lone Republican for conviction — doubtless because Trump is less popular with Utah Republican voters than among other Republicans (Mormons never took to him as much as fundies did). I certainly don’t believe it was because a guy who spent his whole career getting rich(er) by destroying ordinary people’s jobs is more fundamentally decent and honorable than the rest of them.
It is important not to “disenfranchise nearly 63 million Americans
By this argument, no president could ever be impeached and removed, no matter how appalling his actions. Nor could any court ever judge a law to be unconstitutional, since that too would thwart the will of the voters expressed via their legislators. Acting as a check on the president, and in extreme cases impeaching and removing him, is one of the responsibilities imposed on Congress by the Constitution. Which is not, in fact, printed on toilet paper. If she didn’t want that responsibility, she shouldn’t have run for the Senate.
I don’t pick on Sad Lisa or Concerned Sue because they’re women, just like I don’t pick on Lindseypoo for being a teenage girl who has one crush after another. Of course, when it comes to things like the right to choose and other “women’s” issues (they are really just fairness issues), it’s natural to point out how their rhetoric doesn’t match their votes. Their completely kowtowing to an imbecilic crook in the Oval Office has nothing to do with them being women. I thought of replacing Simplicity with Complicity months ago, and I’ve been champing at the bit to use it. I had the daughter/wife Ivanka in mind, but this seemed like the perfect opportunity.
I appreciate Mittsie for doing the right thing for a change, but I don’t consider him a hero. He has nothing to lose. He’s rich, he’s more popular in his state than Twitler, and he’s not up for reelection until 2024. He’ll be almost 80, so he might not even run again. By the way, the part of his speech that made my eyes roll to the back of my head was his chastising Hunter Biden for using his last name to get a lucrative job. Seriously? The son of AMC Chairman and President/Governor/Secretary of HUD George Romney never mentioned his father’s name when he was looking for employment and poor Ann was scraping by, forced to feed her children tuna fish during those hardknock years when the family had to get by on investment income? Oh, and let’s just ignore this from the New York Times in 2012:
“Matt Romney, a son of the Republican presidential nominee, traveled to Moscow this week seeking Russian investors for his California-based real estate firm just days before his father is to wrap up a campaign in which he has vowed to take a tougher stance with the Kremlin.”
Where was I? Oh, yeah, Mittsie probably won’t run again, but I’d be willing to bet a few shekels that one of his sons will run for office when Dad leaves. And don’t even get me started on Mittsie’s niece Ronna Romney McDaniel, who as RNC chair was forced by Twitler to drop Romney from her name and who regularly shits on her own uncle.
I’m getting off track here. Yes, Mittsie made history by being the first senator to vote to convict a president of his own party, but that does not a hero make. If you want to find a guy who voted against his own reelection interests, look no further than Doug Jones. He could have found some reason to acquit and give himself some kind of chance in Alabama, but he didn’t. He stood by his principles, just like he did when he defended his son against Roy Moore’s homophobia and when he defends LGBT rights despite how that plays in Alabama.
I think we use the word “hero” a little too loosely these days. Doing the correct thing should just be doing the correct thing, not an act of heroism. It’s not running into a burning building or into a hail of bullets to save other people at the risk of your own life.
Now that I have gone completely off track, you are correct that we might as well take a sharpie to the Constitution and get rid of impeachment altogether, because it would mean removing a president who won the Electoral College, which is decided by the votes of the people. Of course, impeachment is not really overturning an election, because if it was, every appointment made by an impeached and convicted president would be removed.
Yes, Darlin’, I really agree with you on this. Grateful to Romney so that Trump didn’t get an unsullied “home run,” but he had plenty of opportunities to speak up in the past and didn’t (i.e., birther lie against Obama). Because he didn’t speak up and push back long ago is probably one of the many reasons we have King Orange.
In the meantime, I’m in a state of shock about Trump vengeful speech at the Prayer Breakfast and the vindictive speech in the East Room. Wished you lived close by because I would have been banging on your door in the early morning begging for a strong cup of coffee laced with rum so that you could help me sort out my rage. I’m trying to write a blog on what we’ve lost as a country, but the fear has been frozen in place.
i feel your pain etomczyk. this article hits home with me: https://apple.news/AJtEa33LQQe-eUn9eE2G6lQ . when did civil discourse become acceptable and why do 64m people think a vengeful tone of voice, cuss words, and vindictiveness are leadership qualities to be admired? we need to figure out how and why we’ve degraded to this point. twittler is the symptom. his henchmen and the senate created and sustain him. it’s beyond shocking and gets worse as time goes on.
I was shocked when I read that article. It wasn’t because there was anything new or wrong in it. It was because it was written by Chris Cillizza, and he is very rarely correct about anything.
My dear Eleanor,
It drives me crazy when Rethugs are allowed to get away with saying that the vote for impeachment in the House was totally one-sided. Justin Amash must feel like chopped liver, because he is not a Democrat, he’s an Independent. Therefore, the vote was bipartisan—no home run in the House or the Senate.
I’m grateful to Mittsie for doing the right thing for a change, but the hypocritical (see my comment above about his own son) nonsense about Hunter Biden tainted his otherwise admirable speech. There are many things Mittsie never spoke up about, and his record on shitting all over employees while pocketing millions doesn’t endear him to me in the least. He’s a profoundly selfish man, no matter how pious and humble he wants to appear. He’s got the same sense of entitlement as Twitler. He’s just better behaved and has better hair.
Maybe we have to look at the Prayer Breakfast from a different angle. Every time Twitler speaks in public without a script, his ugliness, hatred and selfishness come out. While his cult members will love it, I have to believe there are more people out there who are shocked and disgusted by it. Some people gave him a pass because they hated Hillary or because they thought his ugly rhetoric was just funny. However, unrolling an enemies list in public and on the record in front of and with the enthusiasm of the Attorney General and elected officials has to shake the more sane members of the public to the core. I keep hoping for a very vocal and very angry Joseph Welch (“Have you no sense of decency, sir? “) to emerge from the Rethug side of the aisle. Justin Amash came closest, but he hasn’t been too vocal lately, and Mittsie couched his Welch moment so much, it won’t echo enough in the future. Maybe the trashing of Mittsie that is already occurring will anger some Rethugs who voted for him when he ran against Obama. Maybe not. Maybe we need to be our own knights in shining armor and not depend on any Rethug growing a set and taking Twitler down.
I think about who can take Twitler down a lot these days. I never thought I’d be saying this, but I am sort of hoping that Bloomberg gets the nomination. He’s not my first or second or third choice, but I think he might be the only one who knows how to go after Twitler and take him down. Do I like that he more or less is buying his way into the conversation? Hell, no. However, he’s using his endless resources wisely. He won’t only try to win the presidency, but he will use his money to try to turn the Senate blue.
You are welcome at my house anytime, dear Eleanor. I do have cawfee and a cawfeemaker (I don’t drink the stuff myself), but give me a little notice, and I’ll run down to the liquor store and get a bottle of your favorite rum. I’ll make you some pancakes, too (found a new recipe, and they’re fabulous!!!), and we’ll have our very own Prayer Breakfast. I’m not at all religious, but I do curse religiously, so hopefully that makes up for any lack of piety.
You’re adorable. When you segue to North Carolina, I just may say hello when I’m on my way to Asheville which is a regular trip.
I agree with you regarding Bloomberg on all your pros and cons. He’s wearing me down in a good way. I’m watching him very closely. We’ve got to pick a winner. Also I agree with you about Trumps public venom. I do think it will eventually erode his standing among independents and moderates. Hang in there kiddo, it’s not over yet!
Like Yogi Berra said, it ain’t over ’til it’s over. I was almost all in for Bloomberg, and then the debate happened. I’ve been for Amy Klobuchar every since the St. Brett the Virgin of Georgetown hearing. She’s been my favorite ever since, but I was despairing that she might not get enough support. After last night’s debate, I’m convinced she can stand up to Twitler in a debate. I think she’s practical and pragmatic. I don’t need to be swept off my feet with lofty rhetoric and promises of things that are not going to happen. I think she not only had the best laugh lines and the best attack lines, but I think she has the right experience, and her closing statement had plenty of heart. She certainly got Twitter’s attention. She was the only candidate trending for hours last night, and almost all of it was positive.