Trump Is Running Out of Defenses

It is a quirk of our current highly polarized political environment that a party can plausibly claim its opponents are acting in a partisan fashion by insisting upon doing so itself. It takes two to tango, but refusing to tango takes only one. And if Democrats and Republicans aren’t dancing together, then any action becomes a partisan action—and can be denounced as such.

And so it was last week that, confronted with a decision by the Democratic leadership of the House of Representatives to authorize procedures for the public phase of consideration of the president’s impeachment, House Republicans voted as a bloc against the measure and thereby enabled themselves to decry the vote as partisan. The criticism was, of course, accurate. Unlike the House votes to authorize the impeachment inquiries of Presidents Richard Nixon or Bill Clinton, this vote came very nearly along perfect party lines—with two Democratic House members joining the Republicans and only a single former Republican, the now party-less Justin Amash, voting with the Democrats.