OPINION | BRADLEY GITZ: The urge to purge

The primary argument against using impeachment to remove Donald Trump from office is that he has already left it; that it is gratuitous at this point, lacking the rationale for the process as conceived by those who established it (to protect the country from a corrupt, possibly dangerous executive). This is also why legitimate questions have been raised regarding the constitutionality of trying now private citizen Trump.

The primary argument in favor, apart from sending a message that might deter future sore losers and disinfect our politics somewhat by barring any future Trump pursuit of public office, is that a Senate conviction on an even modestly bipartisan basis might constitute a step toward the reconciliation that those of us who are neither woke lefties nor Trumpers have long sought.

Such reconciliation will require two understandings, however, with one easier to fashion than the other.

The easier to fashion should be a meeting of disinterested minds around the conclusion that Trump's behavior after the election had moved well into territory for which, had he had more time left to his term, impeachment would have been the obvious remedy. In this respect, it wasn't just the peddling of unproven accusations regarding a stolen election in such a fashion as to erode perceptions of its legitimacy, or the incitement of the mob in a way no previous president would have contemplated, but also his efforts to encourage electoral fraud ("find 11,780 votes") in that phone call to the Georgia secretary of state, which constituted an almost textbook case of the kind of offense for which the founders designed impeachment as a response.

Alas, even if we can muster a consensus that Trump's post-election behavior constitutes sufficient grounds for impeachment, and then some, this still leaves us with the larger problem of the lack of Republican trust regarding Democratic intentions.

Precisely because the Trump phenomenon was more an effect than cause; a predictable reaction to the left's deep dive into identity politics and political correctness, what happens on the right hereafter vis-à-vis Trump will continue to depend to a great deal on whether the left continues, under the figurehead Joe Biden, to continue shifting leftward.

With an increasingly woke Democratic Party now holding the White House and Congress, and the left having strengthened its control of all of the opinion-forming cultural levers in the country, from the mass media and academe to Big Tech and pro sports leagues, the fear on the right is that over-reach will inevitably occur, that not just court-packing and statehood for D.C./Puerto Rico and the Green New Deal are on the way but also efforts to purge Republicans from Congress and conservatives and conservative ideas more broadly from American society.

Crucial to those efforts is the shameful attempt to blur the distinction between the nearly 75 million Americans of presumably conservative inclination who voted for Trump and the violent, pro-Trump mob that stormed the Capitol, as if large chunks of the former had somehow endorsed and were responsible for the behavior of the latter.

Within much of our media, working hand in glove as usual with the leftmost elements of the Democratic Party, is thus being promulgated a dangerous equivalence between mainstream conservatism and extremist anti-constitutionalism in order to further the program of delegitimizing mainstream conservatism.

To a resume that includes racism, sexism and homophobia must apparently now also be appended insurrection and sedition.

Among the many problems with this outlandish indictment is that it will have the effect of driving many Republicans back into the very Trump embrace that they should be weaned from, of reinforcing what has been called "Flight 93" logic.

To the extent that Republicans come to believe that what the Democrats really seek is revenge not reconciliation, and that impeachment would simply be a first step therein, they can hardly be blamed for refusing to quietly present their necks for the noose.

In short, it will be easier for the Republican Party to find a means of moving away from Trump, to the benefit of the nation as a whole, if Democrats resist the temptation to kick them while they're down.

We were consistently instructed throughout last summer's post-George Floyd riots that those who engaged in such violence weren't in any way representative of the thousands who peacefully protested on behalf of social justice.

But now many who routinely issued those assurances are shamelessly presenting, in yet another spectacular display of double-standard, the tens of millions who voted for Trump (and lots of conservatives who didn't) as indistinguishable from those who behaved abominably and even criminally on Jan. 6.

The chain of collective guilt cannot, for the sake of any effort to re-establish some semblance of civic harmony, be so easily extended from the "QAnon Shaman" to Trump to Republican members of Congress and then to Republicans in general.

Apart from those who should be criminally charged for their involvement in the Capitol riot, the only person who should be held "accountable" at this point is some guy named Trump whom we only vaguely remember.

So yes, try and convict in the Senate. For behavior that thoroughly warrants such action.

And then we all agree to succumb to some expedient political amnesia.

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Freelance columnist Bradley R. Gitz, who lives and teaches in Batesville, received his Ph.D. in political science from the University of Illinois.

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