Having seen "Where are the 67 votes going to come from?" dairies and comments ad-literally-nauseam in the Great Impeachment Pie Fight, I'm going to don my flame-retardant skivvies and tackle this question head-on. This is going to be a bit of a stretch for me, because I'm not a Senate groupie, and a number of the players are relative (or, in a few cases, complete) unknowns to me. But I'm going to give it a shot, and I'll look to the comments for people to add their wisdom/best guesses/hot air.
First and foremost, this diary assumes the following:
- There are exhaustive investigations of President Bush and Vice President Cheney over the next year.
- Said investigations result in overwhelming evidence of high crimes and misdemeanors committed by both men.
- The House is forced upon said evidence to draw up articles of impeachment for both Bush and Cheney -- whether individually or collectively, simultaneously or otherwise being irrelevant for the purpose of this diary because it's not about speculating about who's next in succession depending on who does what to whom.
- The Senate proceeds to conduct the impeachment trial -- again, whether simultaneously or not doesn't matter.
- All of the Democratic Senators, and Bernie Sanders, are assumed to vote "guilty" at the conclusion of the trial (not because they're Dems, but because the evidence is overwhelming. Let's not forget that.)
If you're inclined to argue with the above assumptions or nitpick about them, go write your own diary. For the purposes of this one, the above are taken as given.
So, the argument goes, we can't do any of the above because we'd have to find 16 Republican Senators to vote "guilty", and if we can't do that, then we should not even have enough respect for the Constitution and the rule of law to go through the process, due to the potential political fallout. What-evah. I vehemently disagree with this mindset, but for the sake of discussion, I'll roll with it. If that's the case, then let's look at where those 16 votes might come from.
First of all, there are the 20 Republican Senators whose terms expire in 2008. I think it's reasonable to argue that at least some of these 20 men and women are going to be hard-pressed to support Bush in the event of a trial -- remember, a trial with overwhelming evidence against a President with a 20% approval rating (at best). Given the escalating implosion of the Middle East and given every other error and failure and lie and screwup, I believe that any Congresscritter who clings to Bush in the next two years is going to be placing their own political career in grave jeopardy, if not committing outright political suicide. And for 20 Republican Senators, their jobs are going to be on the line in 2008.
These 20 Senators are:
Sessions, Alabama
Stevens, Alaska
Allard, Colorado
Chambliss, Georgia
Craig, Idaho
Roberts, Kansas
McConnell, Kentucky
Collins, Maine
Coleman, Minnesota
Hagel, Nebraska
Sununu, New Hampshire
Domenici, New Mexico
Dole, North Carolina
Inhofe, Oklahoma
Smith, Oregon
Graham, South Carolina
Alexander, Tennessee
Cornyn, Texas
Warner, Virginia
Enzi, Wyoming
Of these 20:
- Allard and Inhofe are rumored to be retiring, so would have nothing to lose by sticking by Bush. I'll decline to count on their loyalty to Constitution over party, and write them off.
- I would also be inclined to write off the following as hopelessly entrenched neocons who either don't have to worry about their seat no matter what they do, or who don't have the sense to worry about their seat: Roberts, McConnell, Cornyn and Stevens.
- I would put the following into my personal "no clue what they'd do" column: Enzi, Alexander, Dole, Sessions, Chambliss, Craig. My hunch is that they'd be more likely to stick by Bush than otherwise, but I don't really know.
That leaves me with 8 names that I think belong to people who could possibly, either out of loyalty to the Constitution first, or out of fear for their career, or some combination of both, might be swayed by the overwhelming evidence and might choose to vote to convict: Collins, Coleman, Hagel, Sununu, Domenici, Smith, Graham and Warner.
That's 8 out of 16.
The other 8? My list of possibles would include:
- Olympia Snowe - moderate Republican
- Arlen Specter - ditto
- George Voinovich - ditto, more or less
- Chuck Grassley - ditto, more or less
- Judd Gregg - New Hampshire Republicans are suddenly an endangered species
I don't know who my final three would be.
- John McCain (very long shot, but possible - he wouldn't do it if he thought it'd hurt his chances for the White House, but if he thought it'd help, he'd do it in a heartbeat)
- Lisa Murkowski
- Orrin Hatch
- Richard Lugar
- Jon Kyl
- The aforementioned group about whom I have no clue (Dole et al.)
I'd say they were all long shots, but not completely out of the realm of possiblity. In the face of overwhelming evidence, that is.
You asked. I answered. It's not completely beyond imagining that 67 Senators could be persuaded -- by overwhelming evidence -- to do the right thing, even if it's not necessarily for all the right reasons.