If Impeachment Comes to the Senate, Mitch McConnell Has Some Wiggle Room

(Bloomberg Businessweek) -- Even as Democrats in the House pursue an impeachment inquiry into his dealings with Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, President Donald Trump has doubled down on his attacks, using Twitter to go after his perceived political rivals as well as the members of Congress investigating him. Trump’s actions suggest he has no fear of being removed from office—as well he shouldn’t. So far, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and his GOP have proved an almost indestructible firewall against attacks on the president and his agenda.

While McConnell has called it “laughable” to claim that Trump committed an impeachable offense, he’s also taken a few careful steps to insulate his caucus against a possible reversal. “If this is the ‘launching point’ for House Democrats’ impeachment process,” he said in a statement to Politico, “they’ve already overplayed their hand.” But he also told CNBC he’d have “no choice” under Senate rules but to take up impeachment articles and stopped short of blessing Trump’s conduct. In recent weeks he’s ordered a bipartisan Senate intelligence investigation, backed a resolution written by Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer demanding that the administration turn over the then-secret whistleblower report, and announced he’d been privately pushing the administration to release aid to Ukraine that had been held up before Trump’s phone call with that country’s president.

While no Senate Republican has yet said Trump should be impeached over Ukraine, what they have said suggests he might not have a solid wall behind him if damaging information continues to come out. Trump’s sometime rival Mitt Romney of Utah has called the president’s actions “troubling in the extreme.” Nebraska’s Ben Sasse, who criticized Trump as a candidate but has fallen in line since, said his colleagues shouldn’t rush to “circle the wagons” around the president. And Senate Intelligence Chairman Richard Burr of North Carolina has vowed to “get to the bottom” of what happened.

It would likely take a collapse in support for Trump among Republican voters to change GOP senators’ calculus. While polls show increasing approval among the public for impeachment, it’s come mostly from Democrats. The president’s approval rating among GOP voters remains above 80% in public polls, making any Republican senator’s defection a potentially career-ending decision.

The administration is counting on Republicans to toe the party line. Before it released a rough transcript of Trump’s call with the president of Ukraine, the White House summoned a group of Republican lawmakers for a strategy briefing. Anyone who might have been considering breaking ranks wouldn’t have had to look further than former Senators Jeff Flake of Arizona and Bob Corker of Tennessee to see the consequences: Both decided to retire last year rather than run for reelection after their dust-ups with Trump sent their poll numbers plummeting.

Having to cast a vote in an impeachment trial would put some swing-state Republicans, such as Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania and Rob Portman of Ohio, on the spot. Toomey and Portman have sought to split the difference, criticizing the president but suggesting his actions don’t warrant removal from office. GOP Senators Cory Gardner (Colorado), Martha McSally (Arizona), Joni Ernst (Iowa), and Thom Tillis (North Carolina), all up for reelection in battleground states, have accused the House of overreaching.

Others, including Susan Collins of Maine, have started telling reporters they don’t want to comment on the impeachment question because they might end up serving as de facto jurors, a line that conveniently keeps them out of the daily political fray. Collins has yet to say whether she’s running next year, but she could face the toughest fight of her career if she did, having to court voters in a state that went for Hillary Clinton in 2016. Many Democrats who have voted for Collins in the past are angry over her support for Trump’s agenda and her vote to confirm Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, causing her approval ratings to tumble.

By contrast, an impeachment fight could benefit McConnell—who is himself running for reelection next year—given that Trump won his state, Kentucky, by 30 points. McConnell’s campaign has attacked Amy McGrath, his Democratic rival, for supporting an impeachment inquiry.

Trump’s best protection remains the constitutional requirement that two-thirds of the Senate vote to remove him from office, rather than the simple majority it takes to impeach in the House. No president has ever been removed by Senate vote—Richard Nixon resigned before he could be—and for the Senate to do so in this case would require an almost unimaginable 20 Republican votes to convict.

Even a few defections, however, could damage the president heading into 2020. The White House would have to worry the most about senators like Romney, the 2012 Republican nominee who ripped Trump’s character in 2016 and, like some other Republican senators, refused to vote for him. And Trump has little leverage over long-serving senators planning to retire, such as Lamar Alexander of Tennessee.

There is some precedent for Republican senators turning against the president. Earlier this year, a dozen Senate Republicans, including Alexander, Collins, and Romney, defied Trump on his emergency declaration at the border, despite McConnell’s publicly encouraging them to “vote for border security.” The opposition was enough to rebuke Trump, but not enough to override a veto, making it a relatively safe show of independence. A vote to remove the president from office would of course be far more consequential—and potentially far more politically dangerous.

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Jillian Goodman at jgoodman74@bloomberg.net

©2019 Bloomberg L.P.