Quote (thesnipa @ 23 Oct 2019 16:39)
im not sure how the GOP can even say the narrative with a straight face while Trump is tweeting how corrupt china is, while trying to get a trade deal with them endorsed by congress. sometimes it's nuanced, sometimes it's layers deep. this one is so on the surface i'm not sure how people can think it's pulling the wool over anyone's eyes. the truth is most of the honest trump followers would be happy to give Trump an ethics violation slap on the wrist because this hurts Biden. and perhaps that's the right response, but im not even sure what that slap on the wrist could be. for campaign finance violations we fine the POTUS's campaign. we can't exactly fine him for executive branch maleficence. the congress has impeachment, angry tones of voice, and twitter to punish the president for bad behavior in office. if all you have is a wrench and a hammer you're going to have a hard time doing a lot of repairs.
I've seen a great article about this exact problem a couple of days ago:
https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/10/trivialization-of-impeachment-has-consequences-that-threaten-liberty/Quote
The Framers were sophisticated men, who saw themselves as both students and victims of executive power run amok (as about two minutes’ perusal of the Declaration of Independence elucidates). They understood that governance would involve tussles between the political branches and episodes of overreach — whether out of incompetence, malevolence, or urgency — for which the extraordinary impeachment remedy would be gross overkill. Routine disputes involving the propensities of both the legislature and the executive to act outside their authorities would be handled by lesser remedies. Congress, most importantly, was given the power of the purse and significant power over executive agencies (to create them, to limit their authority, and, in the Senate’s case, to approve their leaders).
My argument in Faithless Execution was that this system has broken down, with no repairs on the horizon. The Framers naturally thought congressional control of the executive budget would obviate the need to resort to impeachment. Lawmakers could defund dubious executive initiatives and withhold funds necessary to carry out the president’s priorities; this would pressure the executive branch to comply with statutes as well as congressional demands for information and policy modification. The ultimate question of a president’s fitness would be left to the sovereign — the American people, exercising the franchise.
In the last century, however, the federal government and the administrative state have grown enormously, vastly increasing executive power. Meanwhile, congressional funding processes have descended into dysfunction. Rather than budgeting programmatically and with an eye on individual outlays, Congress does mammoth omnibus funding. Spending grows on autopilot, with both the president and lawmakers fearful of being seen as slashing dollars from what the media portray as critical federal functions. The power of the purse is no longer a practical check on executive overreach.
That would seem to make impeachment even more indispensable. In the absence of a credible threat of impeachment, lawmakers would have no real check on presidential misconduct — other than Congress’s capacity to embarrass the administration politically with public hearings and commentary. That is, unless impeachment is a real possibility, presidents are limited only by their own sense of what they can get away with politically. That is barely a check in day-to-day governance. It leaves a wide berth for presidential legislating, lawlessness, and flouting of congressional mandates.
The tldr is that the author also cant come up with a good solution for this "gap" between impeachment and everything else Congress can do to rein in a president, but that trivializing impeachment by ramming it through without building public support for impeachment would cause even greater harm. His argument basically boils down to: Democrats should use the impeachment process to convince the public of their point of view, hoping that this will either change Trump's behavior going forward, or cause him to lose reelection in 2020.