'Moderate' Republicans blasted for their 'fealty' to McConnell's trial rules

Writing for Esquire on Wednesday, columnist Charles P. Pierce had nothing but scorn for the "moderate" Senate Republicans like Mitt Romney (R-UT), Susan Collins (R-ME), and Lisa Murkowski (R-AK), and those in vulnerable seats like Cory Gardner (R-CO) and Thom Tillis (R-NC) — all of whom voted in lockstep to adopt the draconian, pro-Trump impeachment trial rules put forth by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY).

"The first big mistake made by President Barack Obama was his determination to look forward, and not back," wrote Pierce. "Too many of the criminals working for the last worst president in history skated. Too many Wall Street vandals got away clean. That cannot be allowed to happen again. The corruption of this administration* is unprecedented."

"And we might as well look to the future, because the present is too dismal to contemplate," continued Pierce. "In the Senate on Tuesday, the Republican Party, represented by its majority caucus, formalized its fealty to this renegade administration*. It had several chances to demonstrate a modicum of independence, a smidgen of human courage, and it failed every time. Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer proposed amendments to add further documents and witnesses to the deliberations. All of them failed by a straight, party-line 53-47 margin."

"In this, no Republican was different from any other Republican," wrote Pierce. "Lisa Murkowski and Tom Cotton were the same. Thom Tillis and Ted Cruz were the same. Cory Gardner and Jim Inhofe were the same. Mitt Romney and Ben Sasse were the same as Mike Rounds and Mike Enzi. And they were all the same as Mitch McConnell. There were no moderate Republicans in the Senate on Tuesday. There were no Never Trumpers. There were only collaborators. There was no independence in the Senate on Tuesday, only complicity. And it was a deadening, sad thing to watch. The only real reaction was another cup of soggy oatmeal from the increasingly useless Susan Collins."

"Barack Obama was wrong in 2008 and Joe Biden is wrong today," concluded Pierce. "The fever never will break. The patient is going to have to die."

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