I think it’s time to look forward with some cold reality on where Impeachment is heading and how it will get there.
First and foremost, Trump ‘s incompetence is a speed bump in the ongoing Neoconservative destruction of competency in government. That may be the only true irony in our current reality the cuts in Democrats’ favor; that the one guy capable of getting elected to the Presidency and willing to wreck anything and everything in favor of a fascist agenda keeps tripping over his own dick. Or Rudy’s dick. We honestly haven’t gotten enough definitive information yet to tell for sure, but the picture surely won’t be a pretty one when we do. But to be clear, the Republicans are having a field day in Washington DC, they represent many of the most powerful and wealthiest people in the world with the best lawyers and lobbyists, who are all rolling large and balling huge with the Republicans and staking huge claims in the Judicial branch to insure their gains…
There are a shit-ton of horrible people doing sketchy shit in DC who have the will and the means to weather this storm. Those people will keep their Public policy apparatchiks whole through this process, and their congresspeople will do the dirty work.
John Bolton will never kick in the Republicans’ door and go berserk. He might execute a carefully planned coup d’etat against a President who grievously harmed our standing in key areas against the expansionist Russians. That plan will NOT harm the Republicans in whole, or anyone he doesn’t want it to.
I personally think the game he’s playing right now is to completely avoid Adam Schiff’s probity and testify exclusively for McConnell. That would give the Republicans the chance to shape the trial conclusion to their narrative of choice to only implicate the fall guys of their choosing and limit damage to the party as a whole.
Guessing further, it will probably hinge on a core group of outsiders: Sondland, Giuliani, and Trump, lean heavily towards giving them an out through ignorance, and follow the Nixon playbook of giving cover for a White House visit with certain moral pillars of virtue “convincing” Trump he won’t survive a trial, so he should resign.
Mopping up after that will be relatively simple and painless.
They can profusely thank him and fellate him and bemoan the legal technicality that forced their hand, but “The Law is the Law!” They can claim a dire need to purge the “Deep State” of all the nasty political agendas they so fortuitously discovered as cover to install partisan Republican hacks.
Then they can sail forward on their voyage of depredation, using the map Trump handed them, but with a quiet, better-behaved partisan at the wheel.