After two weeks in silence, the senators could finally speak. And their voices expressed bitter resentment and fierce partisan militancy. All but one. That of Republican Mitt Romney. The senator from Utah, a presidential candidate in 2012, will go down in history for being the only Republican to vote in favor of the impeachment of the president in the impeachment of Donald Trump.
He spoke slowly, with pauses denoting emotion in announcing “the most difficult decision” he has ever faced. He appealed to his deep religious faith to justify that he proceeded by following the “inescapable conviction” that “the oath before God” demanded it. And he decided to vote against its president.
He considered him guilty of one of the charges, the abuse of power, and not the obstruction of Congress. Enough, in any case, to defend that he should be dismissed. “I think that trying to corrupt elections to maintain power is an assault on the Constitution as heinous as it can be,” he said. “For that reason, it is a crime or a serious offense, and I have no other choice, under the oath I took, than to express that conclusion.”
Romney’s fidelity to his principles was not far enough to prevent President Trump’s acquittal. But his rebellion has the relevance of opening the only visible crack in a party that, in just three years, has entered into a block and without questioning the fold imposed by a leader from outside, which at first many were suspicious of.
Romney has been a recurring critical voice with Trump since he appeared on the scene in the 2016 campaign. But the decision of the Democrats to initiate this process placed him in a dilemma between two loyalties: his party and his own conscience. “When Nancy Pelosi indicated that they were going to pursue the impeachment, my heart sank in terror, ”he had acknowledged. During the two weeks of the Senate trial, I trust that Trump’s defense will present conclusive evidence that will exonerate the president. That’s why he voted with the Democrats last week for asking for new witnesses to be heard. But his people prevented it.
After an express trial in the Senate, the press room was emptied Wednesday of intruders, Judge Roberts returned to the Supreme Court and the sergeant of arms can no longer threaten senators every morning with jail if they open their mouths. The Senate returns to normal and the president remains where he was. But the first takes as a gift a macula of deep division, and the second an aura of indestructible.
The upper house, Republican Lisa Murkowski lamented in her speech, “should be ashamed of the disgusting partisanship it has deployed.” “My hope is that we have hit bottom,” added the senator for Alaska, who had valued voting with Romney and the Democrats so that new witnesses appeared, but then, like this Wednesday, she ended up voting with her co-religionists.
The long faces, the uncomfortable pauses between one speech and another, the absence of emotion before the inexorability of the outcome. Everything contributed to the feeling of grief that seized the Senate during the day everyone was waiting for.
Flying over the ruins, as always, the great absent shadow. The defendant who was heading for an inevitable acquittal. The president who leaves unscathed from a impeachment after a trial without witnesses. The same as yesterday listed the achievements of his three years of office in a House of Representatives where the same partisan tension was cut with a knife.
No one seems to be able to stop Donald Trump, in a triumphant start of the year of his re-election. Their trade wars were going to ruin the country, but the economy continues to grow. His decision to execute Iranian General Qasem Soleimani was going to unleash the disaster, but on Tuesday he was only one of the many statements that applauded his standing.
No Republican legislator broke the discipline of the party when the House of Representatives, of Democratic majority, approved the charges of the impeachment in December. Eight months after the presidential elections, there was nothing Donald Trump expected more than to proclaim an acquittal in the Senate with the monolithic support of his party. But Mitt Romney’s wayward vote deprived him of that complete happiness.
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