The most poignant passage in the just-published excerpt of McKay Coppins’ biography of Mitt Romney is not the image of him eating cold salmon-and-ketchup sandwiches, but of him prepping for the impeachment of Donald J Trump:
Romney did his best to be a model juror — he took notes, parsed the arguments, and agonized each night in his journal over how he should vote. “Interestingly, sometimes I think I will be voting to convict, and sometimes I think I will vote to exonerate,” he wrote on January 23. “I jot down my reasons for each, but when I finish, I begin to consider the other side of the argument … I do the same thing — with less analysis of course — in bed. That’s probably why I’m not sleeping more than 4 or 5 hours.”
What’s poignant is the sincerity. And its rarity. It’s not a huge request of a Senator, after all: to take his or her Constitutional duties with a modicum of seriousness, especially when it comes to something as drastic as the impeachment of a president. And yet Romney was one of the very few Republican Senators who did. And he’ll be gone soon enough.
It’s worth comparing him to Mitch McConnell, mysteriously beloved by conservative columnists, whose jaw-dropping cynicism has done so much to hollow out what’s left of liberal democratic norms this past decade. “This is a political process,” McConnell instructed his troops on the impeachment process. Ignore the plain Constitutional text describing your obligations. Just do what is in the immediate interests of you own party and forget about the rest. McConnell is (barely) living proof of Romney’s remark to Coppins: “A very large portion of my party really doesn’t believe in the Constitution.”
He’s not wrong. This week’s launching of an impeachment inquiry into President Biden when there is no solid proof of a “high crime” anywhere in sight is also far outside Constitutional norms. Investigate the Biden family’s lobbying connections? Sure. Search for any indication that the president was secretly on the take from foreign sources? Absolutely. Make Biden pay a political price for staying too close to his sleaze-ridden grifter son, Hunter? Go for it.
But impeachment? On the basis of evidence yet to be found? On the tenuous principle that “courts have historically proved more willing to honor congressional demands when they are made as part of an impeachment inquiry”? That’s a recipe for routine impeachment for routine congressional oversight. It makes Newt Gingrich look like Howard Baker.
It’s not just in Washington. In Wisconsin, a crucible for partisan insanity, the state GOP appears intent on impeaching a recently elected state Supreme Court justice, Janet Protasiewicz, before she has even issued a ruling! Her alleged high crime is to have expressed an opinion about the grotesquely gerrymandered congressional maps that Wisconsin Republicans have constructed to give them a super-majority in state government out of all proportion to how they do in the actual vote. The charge is that having expressed an opinion during an election campaign, she is required to recuse herself from voting on the constitutionality of the gerrymander.
The trouble is this standard has never been applied to any other justices in the past, has in fact been dismissed in other cases with GOP-backed judges, and is clearly designed simply to block a liberal majority of 4-3 on the court. (The Wisconsin Judicial Commission cleared Protasiewicz of any violation of the rules.) The same state GOP, it should be noted, reacted to losing the governorship in 2018 by instantly voting to strip the new Democratic governor of many of the powers of his Republican predecessor. And, for good measure, they voted this week to impeach their non-partisan elections supervisor, despite no evidence that the elections of 2020 were anything but legit. I mean: why the fuck not?
The theme that connects all these dots is simply a refusal to grant legitimacy to the Democratic Party — even if that party wins a majority of the votes, even if they play by the rules, even if this means flouting the obvious democratic wishes of the voters. That’s also the underlying rationale behind Trump’s grotesque attempt to overthrow the results of the last presidential election — with no evidence of malfeasance. It is that no Democrat has a right to be president; and if they are elected, it must be because they cheated.
In yet another instance of Republican extremism, Senator Tommy Tuberville has effectively shut down the usual process for more than 300 promotions within the military for months now in order to protest the Pentagon’s policy of reimbursing female servicemembers who want to travel out of state to get an abortion. The Navy’s No. 2 officer told the Senate this week, “It will take years to recover … from the promotion delays.” This from a party that claims to respect federalism, and to care about national security. Quite obviously, neither is true. And let’s not talk about the possibility of another federal government shutdown, because the GOP is happier throwing tantrums than governing the country.
Yes, the Democrats are not blameless. The campaign to expand the Supreme Court, or to delegitimize it, because Trump lucked out on nominations, is an attempt to get around ordinary Constitutional politics. So, in a way, was the hyping of Russian interference in the 2016 election; and the new argument that the Constitution already has a provision for barring Trump from running for office again. But these notions have not been endorsed by the president, and are not seriously on the table. In the GOP, in stark contrast, the abuses are real, ongoing, and rooted in a deep rejection of liberal democracy by the Trump base.
All of these GOP tactics are abuses of legitimate procedures for extraneous and utterly cynical partisan ends. Some call these maneuvers authoritarian, but that, to me, suggests something too constructive. These abuses are varieties of vandalism and nihilism, procedural moves in the tit-for-tat destruction of liberal democracy, committed by partisans dedicated to no principle other than keeping the other party out of power.
MAGA is not interested in building anything, in winning a real majority, in constructing an actual future rather than lamenting an invented past. Everything is performative and destructive. It’s all driven by who they are against rather than what they are for. As a Republican Senator told Romney as he settled in, their view is that the first consideration in voting on any bill should always be: “Will this help me win re-election?”
There’s no definitive moment in the collapse of a republic, but that quote comes close. If all you care about is your own grip on power, regard the opposing party as ipso facto illegitimate, and give zero fucks for the system as a whole, a liberal democracy has effectively ceased to exist. A single major party, captured by radicals and nihilists, can do that.
(Note to readers: This is an excerpt of The Weekly Dish. If you’re already a subscriber, click here to read the full version. This week’s issue also includes: my debate with Freddie DeBoer over communism and the left eating itself; a bunch of listener feedback on my free-market debate with Sohrab Ahmari; eight reader dissents over my call for Biden to step aside; my take a new study on the black lives destroyed by BLM; nine notable quotes from the week in news; 20 pieces on Substack we enjoyed this week on a wide variety of topics; a spot-on impression of Kamala for a Mental Health Break; an end-of-summer window from Manitoba; and, as always, the results of the View From Your Window contest — with a new challenge. Subscribe for the full Dish experience!)
How BLM Took Over 3,000 Black Lives, And Counting
Has any social movement backfired so catastrophically in so short a period of time? Read my short but depressing item here.
New On The Dishcast: Freddie DeBoer
Freddie is a writer and academic. He’s been a prolific freelancer at publications such as the NYT, the WaPo, Harper’s, The Guardian, Politico, and The Daily Dish. His first book was The Cult of Smart (reviewed on the Dish as “Bell Curve leftism”), and his new book is How Elites Ate the Social Justice Movement. You should also follow his writing on Substack. A longtime friend of the Dish, Freddie is someone I felt I knew from his writing. He’s somewhat different in person.
Listen to the episode here. There you can find two clips of our convo — on the hypocrisy of helicopter parents on the left, and the relative evil of US foreign policy. That link also takes you to a bunch of listener commentary over last week’s debate with Sohrab Ahmari over the free market. Here’s a clip of that pod:
Browse the Dishcast archive for another convo you might enjoy (the first 102 episodes are free in their entirety — subscribe to get everything else). Coming up: Vivek Ramaswamy on his vision for America, Leor Sapir on the treatment of kids with gender dysphoria, and Ian Buruma on his new book The Collaborators: Three Stories of Deception and Survival in World War II. Later on: Spencer Klavan, Martha Nussbaum, Matthew Crawford, David Brooks and Pamela Paul. Please send any guest recs and pod dissent to dish@andrewsullivan.com.
A reader makes the case for Biden 2024 in the face of my criticism:
He has deftly managed a normally unruly party by promoting center-left legislation that is well within the mainstream. And his record is very good: record levels of domestic employment; record levels of domestic private investment in new plants and warehouses; record levels of domestic fossil fuel production and investments in new, carbon-free technologies; professional management of the pandemic; a growing NATO; more robust and effective alliances in the Pacific to counter China.
Biden is America’s only politician who has actually defeated Trump. The reason? Biden appeals to a sliver of the electorate that are vital to Trump’s general election prospects: middle-of-the-road Catholics who identify with Biden as “one of us”; blue-collar swing populists who like Biden’s pro-union bona fides; conservative blacks who rewarded Biden for being Obama’s VP; center-right women who find generic Dems appealing in the wake of Dobbs.
Read my response, along with seven other dissents, here — there are some strong ones. More on the pod page.
This is a feature in the paid version of the Dish spotlighting about 20 of our favorite pieces from other Substackers every week. This week’s selection covers subjects such as the doubling of child poverty after the tax credit lapsed, deadly subway pushers, and the dystopian future of sex. Below are a few examples:
Patrick Brown dampens the claim that hurricanes have gotten worse with global warming. Here at the Eastern tip of Cape Cod this weekend, I hope he’s right.
You can also browse all the substacks we follow and read on a regular basis here — a combination of our favorite writers and new ones we’re checking out. It’s a blogroll of sorts. If you have any recommendations for “In the ‘Stacks,” especially ones from emerging writers, please let us know: dish@andrewsullivan.com.
The View From Your Window Contest
Where do you think it’s located? Email your guess to contest@andrewsullivan.com. Please put the location — city and/or state first, then country — in the subject line. Proximity counts if no one gets the exact spot. Bonus points for fun facts and stories. The deadline for entries is Wednesday night at midnight (PST). The winner gets the choice of a VFYW book or two annual Dish subscriptions. If you are not a subscriber, please indicate that status in your entry and we will give you a free month subscription if we select your entry for the contest results (example here if you’re new to the contest). Happy sleuthing!
The results for this week’s window are coming in a separate email to paid subscribers later today. Here’s a preview from one sleuth, who has a “wild guess” — and gets the right continent:
Dang — I missed the last contest by one window. I really have no idea this week, but I’m guessing Monrovia, Liberia. Why? Well, you look for clues wherever you can find them, and when you can’t find one, you have to make one up. Others may disagree, but the following snippet of the photo resembles an American flag, and the setting looks like it could be Africa, and what African flag looks just like an American flag?
If nothing else, I hope this will serve as a chuckle for someone, somewhere.
