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Will Ukraine Shift the Never-Trump Ground on Impeachment?

House Democrats deciding whether or not to support impeaching President Trump have faced numerous pressures in either direction – usually, folks to their left all but demand, while those to their right forswear it.

One of the loudest impeachment-is-a-bad-idea factions has been the slowly dwindling but still influential group known as Never Trump Conservatives (of which, full disclosure, I still consider myself to be one). Then the Ukraine story hit (Washington Post [1]):

A whistleblower complaint about President Trump made by an intelligence official centers on Ukraine, according to two people familiar with the matter, which has set off a struggle between Congress and the executive branch.

The complaint involved communications with a foreign leader and a “promise” that Trump made, which was so alarming that a U.S. intelligence official who had worked at the White House went to the inspector general of the intelligence community, two former U.S. officials said.

Two and a half weeks before the complaint was filed, Trump spoke with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, a comedian and political newcomer [2] who was elected in a landslide in May.

That call is already under investigation by House Democrats who are examining whether Trump and his attorney Rudolph W. Giuliani sought to manipulate the Ukrainian government [3] into helping Trump’s reelection campaign.

In particular, there was concern about whether or not Trump tried to pressure Zelensky to rehash old and disproven charges surrounding the family of Joe Biden. That later became the explicit accusation (WaPo [4]).

President Trump pressed the leader of Ukraine to investigate the son of former vice president Joe Biden in a call between the two leaders that is at the center of an extraordinary whistleblower complaint [5], according to two people familiar with the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter.

Trump used the July 25 conversation with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to pressure the recently elected leader to pursue an investigation that Trump thought would deliver potential political dirt on one of his possible challengers in 2020, the people said.

The descriptions of the call provide the clearest indication to date that Trump sought to use the influence of his office to prod the leader of a country seeking American financial and diplomatic support to provide material that could aid the president’s reelection.

On one level, this was just one more log for the Trumpster-fire, as Trump supporters and opponents took their usual positions…

…except for Never Trump Conservatives, some of whom took the additional step of moving past their previous skepticism about impeachment.

For example, Max Boot (WaPo [6])…

Until now, I have been willing to accede to the judgment of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) to go slow on impeachment proceedings that are unpopular with voters and could imperil the Democratic majority. But if the new scandal involving President Trump and Ukraine is as bad as it seems — and that is, of course, a very big if at this early stage — the House will have no choice but to impeach, consequences be damned.

…George Conway (WaPo [7])…

To borrow John Dean’s haunting Watergate-era metaphor once again [8], there is a cancer on the presidency, and cancers, if not removed, only grow. Congress bears the duty to use the tools provided by the Constitution to remove that cancer now, before it’s too late. As Elbridge Gerry put it at the 1787 Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia, “A good magistrate will not fear [impeachments]. A bad one ought to be kept in fear of them.” By now, Congress should know which one Trump is.

…Tom Nichols (The Atlantic [9])…

If this, in itself, is not impeachable, then the concept has no meaning. Trump’s grubby commandeering of the presidency’s fearsome and nearly uncheckable powers in foreign policy for his own ends is a gross abuse of power and an affront both to our constitutional order and to the integrity of our elections.

…and none other than Rick Wilson [10] himself, in reaction to ex-Congressman David Jolly’s recommendation for an impeachment inquiry: “We’re in new territory, and this is clearly the only way to move this past the WH/Barr/DNI obstruction.”

I am not going to say we should expect impeachment to happen tomorrow. The Ukraine story is evolving; people are reacting; and where predictions are concerned, I’m terrible.

am saying that one of the redoubts of the impeachment-is-mad argument appears to be coming down. Democrats in the House who have not yet decided to support it are less likely to hear Wilson et al warn against it. Indeed, they might hear encouragement for it from their right.

That makes impeachment more likely today than it was yesterday.