NYMag's The Intelligencer: The Endgame for Trump Comes Into View

[onetexan]

http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2018/08/trump-impeachment-the-endgame-comes-into-view.html
"It is important to remember that the unrelenting lockstep loyalty of the feckless GOP leadership and the party’s base to Trump are not indicators of his fate. An occasional outlier in the Jeff Flake vein aside, Nixon’s party was wholly loyal to him too. Like today’s Vichy Republicans, they remained loyal despite the indictments of Cabinet members and aides as close to Nixon as Manafort, Cohen, and Michael Flynn have been to Trump. They remained loyal after the nation was riveted by the devastating Watergate hearings of the summer of 1973, which portrayed all the president’s men as counterparts to the mobsters seen in the previous year’s Hollywood hit The Godfather. They remained loyal even that fall, when Nixon’s firing of the special prosecutor in the “Saturday Night Massacre” attempted to blowtorch the Constitution and the rule of law.

As a counsel to the House Judiciary Committee during the 1974 impeachment inquiry pointed out in a Times op-ed piece ten days ago, Nixon’s defenders routinely dismissed Watergate investigations as a political “witch hunt” intended to reverse the Democrats’ 1972 electoral defeat. As late as the end of July 1974 — less than two weeks before Nixon’s August 9 helicopter departure from the White House lawn — most Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee voted against all articles of impeachment. Many Republicans on the committee continued to support him even after the August 5 release of the “smoking gun” tape revealing that Nixon had ordered a cover up of the Watergate crimes. Had the Democrats not controlled both houses of Congress — and had the era’s Nixon-sympathizing conservative Southern Democrats not finally turned on him — Nixon might have held on until a few months more, until November 1974. But no longer than that. The Democrats gained 49 additional House seats and four Senate seats in the midterms. His doom was assured.

With all the debate about whether Trump could or should be impeached this very minute — a wholly theoretical debate as long as the GOP controls Congress — we tend to forget that Nixon was never tried for impeachment. He quit once he realized he didn’t have the votes to survive such a trial and when he no doubt realized that he was in criminal jeopardy. (A fear that would only be alleviated when his successor, Gerald Ford, granted him a pardon.) Trump, unlike Nixon, is out of touch with reality. He doesn’t know how to count votes, and he believes he can defy the law with impunity. (Nixon, a lawyer, could only lie to himself about his criminal exposure up to a point.) But, whether Trump recognizes it or not, the fact remains that his main and perhaps only hope for clinging to office is that Republicans hold the House in November. Polls — and the history of midterm elections inflicting damage against the party occupying the White House even during non-criminal presidencies — tell us that a blue wave is more likely.

If there is a shocking upset GOP victory in November, then all bets are off: America is in worse trouble than we already think and possibly in an existential fight for survival.
But the more plausible scenario is that Trump, even if he has to be pushed kicking-and-screaming by Ivanka and the possible jailbirds Donald Jr. and Jared, gets out of Dodge. As with Nixon, his administration is most likely not to end with impeachment but with a self-pitying and self-justifying resignation in which Trump lashes out against both Republicans and Democrats, declares another ersatz “win,” and flees.

Up until the ship of state hits the iceberg, the Vichy Republicans will not hit the lifeboats. Trump’s loyal supporters will remain loyal even then, still chanting, as they did during the president’s West VIrginia rally this week, “Lock her up!” and “Drain the swamp!” (Polls found that a quarter of the country still supported Nixon even when he resigned.) The exact timing remains unknown, and a little more perseverance and patience in the face of the torrent of Trump indignities will be required. But when this White House collapses, it will happen fast. As the Washington reporter Elizabeth Drew, who covered Watergate for The New Yorker, would conclude, “In retrospect, the denouement appeared inevitable, but it certainly didn’t feel like that at the time.”
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The comparisons to Watergate are striking.

[murielm99]

1. I have been thinking about that for quite a while.

I lived in a very red county when Nixon resigned. Many of my neighbors remained loyal to Nixon, even after he resigned. They felt his only crime was getting caught.

There was a shift in some people's thinking after the Ford pardon. I spoke with republicans who were sickened by the pardon. But that was not everyone.

Long after 45 is gone, we will have to cope with the red hats.

[gopiscrap]

2. this is pretty much what I have been saying also

[empedocles]

3. 'VICHY REPUBLICANS'

We have another winner!

[lagomorph777]

4. "In retrospect the denouement appeared inevitable but certainly didn't feel like that at the time"

That's true; I remember feeling the same way then: "Will this ever end? Are we screwed forever?" I see the momentum building very rapidly now.

[onetexan]

7. Yes, especially with the revelation today that

The Idiot's long time CFO has also been granted immunity. Things seem to be spiralling out of trump's small hands very quickly.

[lagomorph777]

8. CFO is the Trump Organization's glue.

The glue has been dissolved. What a mess.

[3Hotdogs]

5. Ford's pardon is now biting us in the ass.

It would have been better if he allowed criminal prosecution to take place, then pardon him. By issuing a pardon for known and future unknown crimes, we will never know what other criminal activities Nixon perpetrated.

The same with the Orange Shit-stain. Trump can now pardon Manafort for all present and future...

[onetexan]

6. Manafort wont escape state prosecution

I dont think Ford could have foreseen the level of corruption this current administration perpetrated, which is a thousand times worse than what Nixon did.