Why the Impeachment Trial Needs a Secret Ballot

(By American Zen's Mike Flannigan, on loan from Ari )

Let's face it- For those of you who still stubbornly believe in a single unseen deity who will always gladly drop his celestial affairs to listen to and grant your wishes for everything from world peace to Tom Brady winning his seventh Super Bowl ring tomorrow, God is indeed a feckless thug. And that especially applies to the right wing that dutifully trots out their favorite Sky Wizard when called upon to prove their pious bona fides (although many would refer to them using Samantha Bee's delectable phrase.)

    We already have mountain ranges of evidence of Republican fecklessness. They thrive in the shadows and when a whistleblower or reporter casts disinfecting sunlight on their never-ending rat-fuckery, they squeal in indignation, demanding, in spite of federal laws protecting them, the whistleblower's name and snarling at the media about partisan witch hunts and Gotcha moments.

     So, yes, let us call them out for the 5th Column, feckless cunts Republicans are.

    Then this past week, they shamelessly proved in numbers that don't lie just how feckless they truly are. In a broadcast from Philadelphia today, CNN's Michael Smerconish showed some interesting side-by-sides illustrating how Republicans vote when the usual white hot light of transparency shines on them as opposed to when they get to operate in their true element- In the shadows of anonymity.

    

    This was the result of a closed door vote in the GOP House caucus last Wednesday as to whether to throw Liz Cheney off her chairmanship that that same House had gladly conferred on her two years ago before she'd even opened her boxes in her new congressional office. Cheney, as we all now know, joined nine other Republicans on January 13th to vote for the single article of impeachment authored by Congressman Jamie Raskin (D-MD) against Trump for inciting a riot.

    It wasn't surprising that the mostly white male House GOP went after perhaps the most visible woman in their caucus, regardless of her parentage. What was notable was the fact that they felt they had to vote on whether or not to expel Liz Cheney from the #3 seat in the GOP House leadership. It was virtue signaling at its worst. The House GOP knew the vote would be held behind closed doors and that no one outside that House GOP would know who'd voted what way. By way of illustration, note how the split was almost perfectly inverted when compared to the public, virtue-signaling votes they'd cast on January 6th, the day of the riots.

    

   As the first graphic plainly shows, the whole thing, a ridiculous admixture of a Spanish Inquisition of a fellow monk with kabuki theater, never should have been held and they knew, by virtue of their secret votes, that it would be an exercise in futility. Then the next day, Thursday, rolled around and this time there was an open vote in the full House. This vote would determine whether nor not Marjorie Taylor-Greene would get to keep her two committee assignments.

     The results were stunning by contrast.

    

     When they knew they were being scrutinized with an electron microscope by the same lunatics who'd invaded the Capitol just a month ago, only 11 Republicans could be bothered to vote with the Democrats to expel Greene off the committees. That included Fred Upton, a moderate Republican who'd cast a vote to impeach Trump for the second time and got censured by Michigan's county GOP officials for his troubles.

"I want to live!"

That same night, the one in which the House passed a third article of impeachment against Trump, Congressman Jason Crow (D-CO), a former Army Ranger, was on MSNBC and said, "I had a lot of conversations with my Republican colleagues. ... A couple of them broke down in tears ... saying that they are afraid for their lives if they vote for this impeachment." "Join the club," he said to these weepy patriots too scared to do their constitutionally-mandated, patriotic duty and vote for the impeachment article (Again, there were just 10 in the public vote).

     This alone would qualify Republicans for the Wet Legged Party of the Year Award and they seemed to have taken no inspiration from the fact that the Democrats, the same faction most rabidly targeted by the rioters just a week ago, still voted their conscience. To date, not a single one of them had had their hair mussed, much less killed and the same applies to their families. Republicans, based just on that, deserve the adjective "feckless". They are so cowed by the past actions and preemptive actions of the kind of maniacs that elected Greene that they're tailoring their votes accordingly.

    And they're voting radically differently on related issues and how Republicans vote is entirely predicated on whether or not they get to vote in secret. That's what it takes to get Republicans to do the right thing- Not accountability but the promise and lure of its absence. And if this is what Senate Democrats have to do, to give Republicans the incentive of anonymity, which is where they're most comfortable, after all, then we should give it to them during next week's impeachment trial.

   Without it, it's virtually certain Trump will get sprung by the feckless cunts of the Senate Republicans. The only difference will be this time, Democrats will be allowed to call witnesses and introduce evidence.  A trial balloon vote (public) on January 26th gave us predictable results- 45 Republicans voted that the impeachment itself was unconstitutional because Trump's no longer in office. Which has already been laughed out of the court of public opinion.

     That'll be the tack taken by his pathetic pair of lawyers brave enough to still represent the mad, deposed king who still thinks he's king and refuses to admit he had been deposed. If Trump decides, after all, that he'll testify (as Charlie Pierce thinks), his refusal to accept defeat and that Joe Biden is the 46th president will simultaneously play into the Democrats' hands and undercut his legal team's defense that he is an ex president and cannot be impeached. Once that ridiculous hurdle is cleared, then the impeachment managers can get to the real meat of the issue.

     That Trump did incite a riot because of his psychopathic refusal to accept lawful election results, that he told the spittle-flecked mob that knew exactly what to expect and what they'd be called upon to do in his name. That they tore apart pieces of our nation's Capitol literally with their bare hands and murdered a police officer and caused two others to commit suicide and getting four of their own killed because Trump, realizing he didn't have the DoD to see to his interests, whipped up a peoples' army like a tinpot Mexican revolutionary.

     And, barring a secret ballot, which Schumer can insist upon, they will blithely forget that Trump's incendiary rhetoric still ringing in the ears of the tens of thousands who have not been caught by the FBI, painted a fat, red indelible target on their backs for the foreseeable future. They also need to learn that getting rid of Trump for good has nothing but upside. And that, if they don't, and Trump runs again in four years, and loses, we'll be back in the same shit we were in on January 6th.