Michael Flynn has resigned

[The Romulan Republic]

Why does every thread about Trump always seem to bring up impeachment and then likely outcomes of said process? I think we're being far too optimistic here. The only audience republicans in congress have to placate is their base who think Trump is doing great. Primary challenges are all they care about so can we stop acting like impeachment is anything but a remote possibility already?

There are a lot of states where a lot of voters didn't show up to the 2016 election at all, or simply couldn't stomach voting for Trump.

If the word on the street is "Trump is a criminal, Representative Smith is sheltering him," that could bring a lot of voters to the polls against Smith. And suppression or no suppression, the House does wobble back and forth, and more registered voters showing up can upset districts that are supposed to be "safe" in that they reliably produce 55% majorities in favor of one party or the other.

Well why would any of that be a concern before the midterms? We are still looking at 2 years of Trump even assuming there is some sort of grand political awakening. The number of house and Senate seats that would have to change for an impeachment to happen is also frankly staggeringly high. What's to say more people don't just tune out and don't vote, especially in the red leaning gerrymandered districts democrats would need to win in for impeachment to be realistic? Another problem here is who exactly do we expect to do any real investigation of Trump's administration? The media can be safely ignored by the GOP as the fake news bubble will protect their key voters and alienate the rest. A couple of GOP senators is not enough to drive anything meaningful, even if we assume McCain and the rest are serious about it which is far from clear given how they are voting so far. Party loyalty is all that matters the modern GOP now. The same problem goes for the 25th amendment solution being suggested. It's pretty laughable to think Trump's own cabinet would vote to remove him. Are we just to ignore all the reports about Trump having a hard time filling posts because he insists on selecting for loyalty above all?

Unless we see a major crises being obviously and disastrously mishandled I see little hope for impeachment before the midterms at the earliest. By obviously mismanaged I mean we'd have to see lots of Americans dieing on TV.
More likely is voting him out after 4 years when republican policies are truly biting home and truly screwing everyone by that point. The midterms may not be enough time for their dismantling of government and services to be obviously bad. Just look at how long Kansas has been pursuing it's small government agenda before being forced to modify it ever so slightly.

Nobody wants to wait four years, though, because:

a) He probably will have gotten lots of Americans (and even more foreigners) dead on TV by then.

b) Give these shits four years to implement more restrictions on voting, continue targeting the press, and put in judges who will tolerate and sanction those things, and it may not be realistically possible to win an election against them.

So they ought to try for impeachment as soon as possible. Which, unless a lot of Republicans suddenly see the light, is, yes, in two years minimum.

[Gandalf]

As I've said, the Republican Party leadership has put a lot of time and effort into creating a framework of media and popular support that would let them run certain kinds of candidates and easily sweep certain states. All the candidate has to do is blow the right dogwhistles, tell the right big lies, strut and posture with the right kind of machismo. Any question of their fitness for office is bypassed in the thought process of the Republican base- because they push the buttons Fox has been wiring up since the '90s.

Bush the Younger was the quintessential example of this kind of candidate.

What I'm not sure the Republican leadership realized until Trump started building momentum was that anyone can do this, it doesn't have to be a candidate who was pre-vetted or pre-approved by the RNC. Anyone can tell those lies, blow those dogwhistles, and so on.

Cue Donald Trump, who's been building up his image of sleazy macho pseudo-Randist wheeler-dealer screw-you-I've-got-mine for decades. He was exactly the sort of man who could do that harder than anyone the RNC had prepared to climb into the ring with him. The kind of person who thought Bush Junior was a good president was almost certain to think Trump would make a great president, because Trump is in many ways an exaggerated version of Bush. Trump projects bigger images of the same strengths that Republican voters saw in Bush Junior, while having bigger versions of the same weaknesses that Republican voters have been conditioned to minimize or ignore.*

The Republican Party has been building a Trump-shaped hole into which they've been placing almost-Trump candidates for twenty years now.

I'm not sure what you're getting at here.

*The only conspicuous difference I see is in Trump's bullying pettiness, and in his approach towards women. But neither of those is on the list of things that Republican base voters actually look at when their buttons are being pushed. They don't care if their candidate is a bully or a womanizing creep, as long as he tells the right lies and beats his chest loudly on the issues they've been told are threatening their notion of America.

On approaches to women, let's just hope that Trump doesn't try to give Merkel an impromptu back rub.

[Simon_Jester]

I'm not sure what you're getting at here.

It's mostly just a generalized reflection on American politics and on the relationship between the RNC/Republican leadership/Republican intelligentsia, and the Republican voter base.

[MKSheppard]

So, H.R. McMaster may be in.