Impeachment will only worsen the GOP's legitimacy crisis

If Republican leaders turn on Trump, will the voters turn on them?

President Trump.
(Image credit: Illustrated | Getty Images, iStock)

President Trump is about to make history as the first twice-impeached president of the United States. That's double Andrew Johnson and Bill Clinton, and two more times than Richard Nixon was ever impeached.

That Democrats want to impeach Trump is a classic "Dog Bites Man" story in that it is unremarkable. Many of them favored his impeachment before he even took office and some are now talking about ways to impeach him even after he is gone. The real change is that a growing number of Republicans favor Trump's removal from office, too. And while most of the confirmed GOP supporters are from swing districts where Democratic voters are plentiful, have serious foreign policy differences with Trump, or both, that Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is rumored to privately favor the latest impeachment bid is a story of "Man Bites Dog" caliber.

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W. James Antle III

W. James Antle III is the politics editor of the Washington Examiner, the former editor of The American Conservative, and author of Devouring Freedom: Can Big Government Ever Be Stopped?.