Why Trump and the Republicans break all the rules

President Donald Trump almost certainly committed a crime and an impeachable offense by reaching out to a foreign head of state, the Ukrainian president, for help in finding dirt on Joe Biden, a potential adversary in the 2020 U.S. presidential campaign. Remarkably, Trump has admitted he did talk to the Ukrainian president about Biden but says he did nothing wrong.

Democrats are not buying it. After holding fast against impeachment for months, earlier this week Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi announced the formal start of an impeachment inquiry. This time the president’s conduct crossed a line that even the cautious, strategic Speaker concluded impeachment was the constitutional duty of Congress and the only way to hold the president accountable.

The big problem for the Democrats is similar to what prosecutors face when they try a police officer, the thin blue line in that case, and the thick red line in this one. Cops don’t testify against other cops, with rare, rare exceptions. Juries acquit cops even in the face of video evidence of a long, prolonged beating as in the Rodney King case back in 1992 that led to the deadliest riot in recent history.

Republicans in the Senate would serve as the jury in an impeachment trial of Trump. After witnessing two years of lockstep GOP support of the president through thousands of lies, inhumane policies like separating families and caging children, asking for and using Russian help in the 2016 election, and innumerable other outrages, I don’t believe Senate Republicans would convict Trump no matter what he does. What this means is that the system of checks and balances designed by the Founders to prevent tyranny does not work with a monolithically partisan and rabidly reactionary Republican Party.

The invitation by a U.S. president to a foreign leader to intervene in this country’s domestic political process is a betrayal of the nation and its system of governance. But this was no invitation; more like “an offer you can’t refuse.” At the time of the call, Trump had ordered the withholding of millions of dollars in military aid desperately needed by the Ukrainians to defend themselves from Russian aggression.

It couldn’t be clearer that Trump had maneuvered into a position to blackmail the Ukrainians and tried to use the power of the United States for his own partisan benefit. Typical of this president, it wasn’t a soft sell; reportedly, Trump asked the Ukrainians eight times to investigate Biden. That’s called browbeating.

Also typical is Trump’s claims there was no “quid pro quo,” no intention to use the withholding of military aid to coerce the Ukrainians for going after Biden (despite zero evidence Joe Biden did anything wrong regarding Ukraine). This would be a crystal-clear cause for impeachment and Trump has chosen to come clean on everything else and draw the line here.

If you believe Trump’s no quid pro quo defense, you probably believe the Miami Dolphins will have another perfect season this year. The point of Trump’s literally unbelievable defense is to give stonewalling Republicans a very thin reed behind which to hide.

The saddest thing in all this is that this latest Trump outrage against democracy and national sovereignty is neither shocking nor even surprising. Trump, trailing in every poll, enlisted Russian help as he cheated, lucked into, and demagogued his way to power in 2016. So far, he has gotten away with it. Why not try it again in 2020, this time with Ukraine rather than Russia as a junior partner in the Trump electoral project?

Cheating at everything—business, politics, taxes, even golf—has been a Trump hallmark for a lifetime. More interesting and less frequently noted is that while Trump is without equal in mendacity and political skullduggery, he is not alone. Playing dirty politics has become the modus operandi of the Republican Party as a whole. Trump is not an anomaly in the GOP, he is an advanced black belt in the political dark arts that for a generation have kept the Republican Party mostly on top.

Writing in the Sept. 21 New York Times (“Why Republicans Play Dirty”), Harvard government professors Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt argue persuasively that Republicans cheat because it is an existential need for a party that has remained almost completely white and Christian as society has become more diverse. They are also losing the youth vote, a very bad leading indicator. The minority vote? Never mind.

Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt are right when they write that fear of extinction motivates rampant efforts by Republicans to load the dice in myriad ways, from gerrymandering to voter suppression, from getting Russia’s willing help in 2016 to twisting Ukraine’s arm to get it in 2020.

Republicans practiced occasional dirty tricks way back in the Nixon era. But today it is the default in the Republican political program. Beyond all the reasons the Harvard professors cite to explain that in their exceptional column, I would add this: You can’t play fair, you need to resort to demagoguery and gaming the system to have a chance to win, when you govern for the economic interests of the richest ten to twenty percent and against that of all the rest.