As more and more dark matter is peeled back from Donald Trump’s firing of FBI Director James Comey, one question is glaringly obvious. If the Republicans impeached Bill Clinton over what was essentially a nothing burger, why are they sitting on their hands amid evidence that Trump may have obstructed the investigation into Russia’s attempt to hack the election?
Well, it turns out that at least one former Republican congressman is asking the same question. In a scathing op-ed in Tuesday’s edition of The Washington Post, he argues that, on the face of it, Trump’s alleged misdeeds dwarf those of Clinton. How does he know? He helped write the articles of impeachment against Clinton.
Bob Inglis represented most of the South Carolina Upstate–the same district now represented by former “what about Benghaaazi?” committee chairman Trey Gowdy–from 1993 to 1999 and from 2005 to 2011. During his first stint, he was a member of the House Judiciary Committee, and helped write the four articles of impeachment that went before the House during the 1998 lame-duck session. In hindsight, though, Inglis believes that “a public censure or reprimand” would have worked better.
It was this perspective that caused Inglis to gag when Speaker Paul Ryan suggested that if we had a Democratic version of Trump in the White House, impeachment wouldn’t be on the table. Inglis wasn’t buying it.
.@SpeakerRyan you know this isn't true. You know that you would be inquiring into impeachment if this were a D. https://t.co/mBFn4aCGi4
— Bob Inglis (@bobinglis) June 9, 2017
How is Inglis so sure? Well, he goes further than most Republicans, both elected and retired, in his assessment of the Russian hacking. If any Americans were involved in it, Inglis says, it would be “a treasonous offense.” While he isn’t willing to go as far as to draft impeachment articles against Trump just yet, he does believe that we need a full investigation into this travesty.
Inglis believes it may be a lot harder for Republicans to grow a backbone and desert Trump in the same manner that Republicans deserted Nixon once Watergate broke in full. He notes that in 1974, we only relied on the Big Three network newscasts for news. Since they presented “virtually identical” facts, politicians were well aware that “their political futures rested upon their maintenance of credibility.”
In contrast, Inglis notes that today, Republican lawmakers have to play to “sycophantic media” outlets like Fox News and Breitbart. As a result, Republicans are now forced to play to the Trump diehards. At last count, according to Real Clear Politics, Trump’s average approval rating was at 39 percent. As anemic as those numbers may seem, Inglis believes that Republican congressmen need them to have any hope of keeping their jobs.
“That 39 percent is the dominant force in Republican primaries today. Cross them and you die.”
That mentality led RNC chairwoman Ronna Romney McDaniel to demand an end to all Russia-related investigations. But Inglis believes that if this mentality keeps up, it could destroy the GOP. He believes his fellow Republicans need to accept that “a hostile foreign power has struck at the heart of our constitutional republic”–and they need to follow those facts where they lead, even if they lead to Trump’s doorstep.
Inglis seems to be speaking from experience. During his tenure, he was one of the most conservative members of the House, with a lifetime rating of 93 from the American Conservative Union. In other words–this guy was no RINO. However, particularly during his second stint, he showed some spurts of independence. For instance, he was one of the few Republicans who believed climate change was real. He also voted to censure fellow South Carolina Republican Joe Wilson for yelling “You lie!” at President Obama–one of seven Republicans to do so. Those breaches of wingnut orthodoxy got him primaried out of office by Gowdy in 2010. Inglis only got 29 percent of the vote in the runoff–a stinging rebuke for a sitting congressman.
Nonetheless, it’s refreshing to see a Republican take off his red blinders and realize that this situation is most assuredly not fake news.
(featured image courtesy US Army Africa, part of public domain)
