Maybe they will support impeachment if it means it will improve their own chances of re-election. Otherwise they might just get tossed out in two years.
We're doing our best here to toss out Jason Chaffetz. There are credible GOP contenders, and he's losing support here even among Republicans. (Why not elect a Democrat or an independent? Because Utah.) I tried to get into his now-infamous town hall meeting a while back, but like most people who wanted to attend I had to be satisfied with hovering outside. Chaffetz' committee has oversight responsibility for the executive, but simply refuses to exercise it over Trump with respect to his conflicts of interest. In response to the chants of "Do your job!" Chaffetz' answer was predictably evasive. He simply said the President was "exempt" and that was supposed to be the end of it. Well, yes, except from
one conflict-of-interest law, but not from the general need to avoid emolument.
Further, Chaffetz' committee isn't ja law-enforcement agency. The executive is limited to investigating violations of laws that already exist. The legislature is not, and it can make laws as needed. One of the reasons we allow Congress the power to investigate is to determine whether new laws are warranted. In other words, maybe the President
shouldn't be exempt from conflict-of-interest laws, and maybe it's Chaffetz' duty to collect facts that either support or refute that proposition. Past presidents have voluntarily divested their conflicting interests, so there's an evident moral mandate for such a law. Maybe the reason no one thought before to hold the President accountable for conflicts of interest was because other Presidents held themselves accountable without being asked, and demonstrated that accountability convincingly. Gee, if everyone drove 100 km/h or slower on the freeway without being told to, it wouldn't matter if there were a speed limit law and if some drivers were exempt from it. It's only when that one jerk drives recklessly fast and causes a wreck that we begin to consider the need for regulation and enforcement.
To paraphrase Rand Paul, "Republicans don't investigate other Republicans." That seems to be the conventional partisan wisdom so far. We'll get no meaningful oversight so long as partisan politics overshadow constitutional checks and balances. As for re-election, the tap dancing required to separate races for different branches of government within a single party are well established. Should the need arise -- and it probably will -- GOP candidates for Congress in 2018 and later will already have the rhetoric in place to separate themselves just enough from Trump to make a credible showing. The only way a GOP Congress would impeach President Trump is if he were to do something so treasonous as to make it inevitable political suicide to continue to support him.
