WASHINGTON — President Trump’s control of Senate Republicans is nearly complete.
In their almost unanimous vote on Friday to bar new impeachment trial witnesses, they once again raised one of the big questions in Washington over the past three years: Will Senate Republicans ever step in against the president and say, “Enough?”
Although many Senate Republicans have long expressed serious reservations about Mr. Trump’s character and conduct in office — and some went so far as to say the Democrats had successfully made their case against him — little daylight is visible now. In pressing inexorably toward their preordained vote of acquittal, Senate Republicans made it clear they see their fortunes and futures intertwined with the president’s, and are not willing to rock the 2020 boat.
“Their party is a cult of personality at this point,” said Senator Christopher S. Murphy, Democrat of Connecticut.
Senators who normally are jealous guardians of their power over federal spending seemed to brush aside Mr. Trump’s attempt to hold up military aid that Congress had allocated to Ukraine, an ally fighting Russian aggression on its eastern border. Mr. Trump’s pressure campaign to leverage that aid in return for investigations of his political rivals is at the heart of the impeachment trial.
The transformation of the Senate can be seen in the way Trump-like tactics have seeped in over recent days. Senator Martha McSally, the Arizona Republican appointed to replace John McCain, called a CNN reporter a “liberal hack” after he posed a routine question — a break with civil press relations of the past. She then immediately started raising campaign money off it.
Senator Kelly Loeffler of Georgia, the newest member of the Senate through her recent appointment, attacked Senator Mitt Romney of Utah, her fellow Republican, on Twitter for trying to “appease the left” by backing the idea of witnesses.
Her clear aim was to curry favor with Mr. Trump and she may well have scored a success. But it was hard to imagine a freshly minted senator of the past arriving in Washington and almost immediately questioning the motives and views of a more senior senator who was also the former presidential nominee of her own party — after making significant campaign contributions to him in the past.
It is worth noting that Ms. Loeffler was appointed to fill the seat of the ailing Johnny Isakson, a Republican known for his bipartisan approach in the Senate and his love and respect for the institution. And Ms. McSally represents a distinct contrast with Mr. McCain, a frequent subject of criticism from the president and a man who closed out his career by depriving Mr. Trump of his campaign promise to repeal the Obama administration’s new health care law.
The departures of Mr. McCain and Mr. Isakson are just part of the steady loss of members willing to go their own way when it comes to the president. Outgoing senators are often replaced by much more conservative successors who have attached themselves to the president. It was lost on no member of the Senate that Jeff Flake of Arizona was essentially driven out for his willingness to find public fault with the president.
Bob Corker of Tennessee, the former Republican senator who spoke up against Mr. Trump on occasion and drew the president’s ire, decided not to seek another term in 2018 and has been replaced by Senator Marsha Blackburn, a conservative former House member who has been biting in her criticism of the impeachment trial and the presentation by House Democrats.
“It’s time to end this impeachment farce and get back to work for the American people,” Ms. Blackburn said this week on Twitter.
The shift has not been lost on former senators of both parties who are watching with dismay as the impeachment trial unfolds with a marked partisanship at odds from the trial of President Bill Clinton in 1999, when lawmakers found a way to work out their disagreements over the shape of the trial.
“Not long ago, senators of both major parties always worked to accommodate fellow colleagues with different points of view to arrive at outcomes that would best serve the nation’s interests,” John Warner, a former senator from Virginia, said in a statement. Mr. Warner, who saw himself as a protector of the institution, said he worried that a trial without witnesses would do “lasting damage to the Senate, and to our fragile national consensus.”
Over the years, senators saw themselves as power centers of their own, rising above the House and able to show more independence because of their six-year terms and wider statewide representation. Early on, that sensibility was reflected in their arms-length approach to Mr. Trump when he was still a candidate. Many senators had little to no previous relationship with him.
During the primary campaign, two prominent Republican senators challenging him — Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and Ted Cruz of Texas — frequently raised alarm over the prospect of Mr. Trump in the White House. Mr. Cruz even shied away from endorsing him at the party’s nominating convention. Both paid a price in Twitter abuse from the president, and both are now among his most ardent defenders.
After Mr. Trump’s election, other senators — in private and public settings — said they were concerned about the president’s fitness for office and his Twitter rants against his critics and rivals. Senators split on a few issues and did not show the same fierce loyalty of Republican House members.
Senator Lisa Murkowski, Republican of Alaska, who has exhibited an independent streak, confronted the president in the White House in 2017 over his attempts to repeal the Affordable Care Act, saying she was sent to Washington to represent her constituents and not toe the party line. She followed that up with a vote against Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh, Mr. Trump’s nominee to the Supreme Court.
But on Friday, as Ms. Murkowski cast an important vote against calling witnesses, she sounded a few Trumpian notes in lashing into Democrats for what she saw as a partisan show.
“It has also become clear some of my colleagues intend to further politicize this process, and drag the Supreme Court into the fray, while attacking the chief justice,” she said, referring to repeated efforts by Democrats to have Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., rule in favor of witnesses and to a question from Senator Elizabeth Warren that was critical of the chief justice. “I will not stand for nor support that effort. We have already degraded this institution for partisan political benefit, and I will not enable those who wish to pull down another.”
Republicans in tough re-election fights — Ms. McSally, Senator Cory Gardner of Colorado and Senator Joni Ernst of Iowa, among others — are of the view that they need Mr. Trump, and his supporters in their states, to win.
Democrats say they now fear that Mr. Trump, emboldened by his expected Senate acquittal, will be even less restrained exerting his authority. They aren’t counting on Senate Republicans to do much about it.
Trump on Trial is a continuing series of articles offering reporting, analysis and impressions of the Senate impeachment proceedings.
Source: Elections - nytimes.com
