Impeachment Begins
It’s Wednesday - let’s get after it.
Opening arguments began in earnest on Tuesday. The Trump Team’s defense was…interesting. Tim Miller has the goods on Trump lawyer Bruce Castor - it’s worth the read. One thing I’ve noted is the number of conservative lawyers - Federalist Society types - who are praising Rep. Jamie Raskin, one of the House managers of the impeachment, for the seriousness and cogency of his arguments.
The House managers entered some footage from January 6 into the evidence yesterday. It’s difficult to watch, but I think you should. And then ask yourself this, if former President Trump has conceded after Pennsylvania’s votes were tallied, if no member of the GOP or any serious of conservative media had suggested the election were stolen, if Donald Trump had not suggested for months that the election would be fraudulent if he were not declared the winner - would any of this had happened?
Of course not. Those five people - including Office Brian Sicknick - killed at the Capitol would still be alive.
Most of the Senate’s GOP caucus again affirmed that the proceedings were unconstitutional. Again, I can’t help but note the discontinuity between the GOP and much of the conservative legal world that has argued that it is very much legal and constitutional to impeach and convict an official who is no longer in office. This piece from Ramesh Ponnuru is a good start.
Let’s shift and close on two points.
Monday I offered a few links with center-right support for Mitt Romney’s child allowance plan. It’s worth reading some thoughts to the contrary, so here’s a piece from Scott Winship of the American Enterprise Institute, arguing that Romney’s plan would undo the gains made by the welfare reform of the 1990s. And here’s a piece from Winship’s AEI colleague Angela Rachidi arguing that Romney’s plan would create an incentive for some number of parents to leave the workforce.
I don’t possess any expertise on the matter, though I’m inclined to agree that Romney’s plan to give people money directly might be a better option than a maze of complex government programs. I do share the concern that it might encourage workforce dropout, but then again, some number of people are already out of the workforce and what do you with them? I appreciate Winship’s concern about upward mobility, though, and it’s a point worth bearing in mind.
Lastly, it’s no secret that both Republicans and Democrats have made the case for a politics that supports the working class. But what does that mean? The writer Christopher Caldwell unpacked that recently in a really sharp New Republic essay. For some clarification, the historian Samuel Goldman had some additional thoughts on Twitter, noting, for example, that the GOP thinks of working class as mostly tradesmen, while the Democrats think of working class as hourly shift workers. That’s a significant difference, and finding a path of politics that supports both groups will not be easy. The tradesmen class, for example, if often well enough off though still prone to economic shifts, while the hourly workers feel the pinch of an economic downturn in a more immediate sort of way. In any case, it’s an important point, and an essay very much worth reading.
Should be a wild day in the news - y’all take care and we’ll be back on Friday.