House Speaker Pelosi accused Republican senators who voted to acquit Trump of being “cowardly.” Really? Let’s look at what takes courage and what takes none. Seven Republican senators voted to convict former president Trump. Of those seven, two – Richard Burr (NC) and Pat Toomey (PA) have announced they will not run for re-election when their current term is up in 2022. What about the other five? Susan Collins (ME), Bill Cassidy (LA), and Ben Sasse (NE) were all re-elected last November to another six-year term. How much courage does it take to buck your party when your Senate seat is secure for the next six years? Or when you’re leaving office rather than face the voters in the next election?
Of the seven, which senator has a term that ends in 2022 and who might run for re-election? Lisa Murkowski. Of the seven, only Lisa Murkowski will have to face the voters next year, if she decides to run again. Mitt Romney (UT), the only Republican senator who voted to convict Trump in his first impeachment trial last year, is not up for re-election until 2024. That gives him a long time to mend fences, if he chooses to run for another term in the Senate.
Maybe these seven demonstrated courage. Maybe the other 43 Republicans are all cowards. Then again, perhaps most or all of those 43 senators truly believe that impeaching and trying an ex-president is unconstitutional. 45 Republican senators voted to that effect on a motion put forward by Rand Paul (KY).
Didn’t it show courage for those Democrats in the Senate who voted to acquit Trump? Oh wait, there weren’t any! Not a single Democratic senator voted to acquit Trump. Did that take courage? No. If every other Democrat is voting to convict, no courage is required to go along. Did it show cowardice? We don’t know. It’s conceivable that one or more Democrats in the Senate were not persuaded that Trump incited an insurrection. But for a Democrat to have voted to acquit Trump would have required some serious courage – or perhaps a death wish. Any Democrat who voted to acquit would have faced a massive online attack from the twitterati. The mainstream media would have savaged him or her. And mobs probably would have assaulted the offices and residences of any Democrats who had dared not to cast a vote to convict.
So who are the courageous and who are the cowardly in the Senate? The truth is that we don’t know. Perhaps each and every U.S. senator voted his or her conscience. Reasonable – and even unreasonable – people differ, both on the issue of the constitutionality of the Senate putting an ex-president on trial and on Trump’s guilt or innocence of the sole charge of “incitement of insurrection.”
Regardless of whether the White House, the Senate, and the House are controlled by Democrats or Republicans, it would be a welcomed change of pace for politicians to quit accusing one another of cowardice, treason, heartlessness, corruption, and every other charge they typically throw at those they disagree with.