REPUBLICANS WON'T CONVICT? MUST BE THE DEMOCRATS' FAULT!

The Democrats' case against Donald Trump is strong. The evidence is devastating.

And we all know that acquittal is a certainty.

A sensible person would conclude that Senate Republicans are cynically closing ranks to defend Trump for personal and party advantage, or are so depraved that they lack a moral compass, or are living in fear of Trump's voters -- not just that they'll be abandoned by them but that they'll be killed by them. But no -- some commentators insist that the inevitable acquittal will be Democrats' fault.

Here's Jay Caruso:

... the Democrats' sole focus on the "incitement of insurrection" gives Republicans a weasel-way out of conviction. Republican Rep. Chip Roy of Texas voted against the impeachment article while articulating that the president engaged in impeachable conduct.

Roy said the House should have focused on Trump's pressuring of Vice President Mike Pence to violate his constitutional oath and he's right. He's referencing Trump's call for Pence to refuse to accept electors and send it back to the states to "rectify" the results....

The president violated his oath to uphold the Constitution by pressuring Pence to break his. He also violated his oath of office when he attempted to get the Georgia Secretary of State, Brad Raffensperger, to "find 11,780 votes, which is one more than we have because we won the state." Trump lied, saying he won the state by "hundreds of thousands of votes," so "finding" enough votes to put him ahead to "win" the state.

It's clearly egregious behavior....

Really? Is any of this behavior "clearly egregious" to Republican officeholders? It certainly wasn't when nearly all of them refused to acknowledge Joe Biden's victory long after it was certain, and then when most of the House GOP and much of the Senate GOP lined up to challenge Biden's electors.

... the only way Republicans could defend against it would be to rely on the poorly formed argument that the impeachment trial itself is a sham since Trump is no longer in office.

You mean the "poorly formed argument" that 45 Republican senators accepted before the trial and 44 accepted just as the trial was beginning?

More importantly, making that argument would create a space for 17 Republicans to join with Democrats to convict Trump and prohibit him from holding federal office again.

But where is the evidence that they want "space" to do this?

Then there's this guy:

If the House had followed @AndrewCMcCarthy's advice and charged dereliction of duty -- or simply betrayal of his presidential oath -- the managers would have proven their case 10 times over today.

— Jonah Goldberg (@JonahDispatch) February 10, 2021

McCarthy wrote last month:

What should the House impeachment resolution have looked like?

... he was derelict in his duty as president and commander-in-chief by failing to take any action — indeed, by turning a deaf ear to pleas that he take action — when the seat of the United States government was stormed and lives were in jeopardy, particularly the lives of security personnel, members of Congress, and Trump’s own vice president.

... Pleading the case this way would have had several benefits.

It would have made Capitol Police Officer Brian Sicknick, who was murdered, the face of impeachment....

Focusing the case on what the president was doing, and willfully failing to do, while Officer Sicknick was killed, other Capitol police were assaulted (at least one other of them savagely so), and the lives of the vice president and the people’s representatives were imperiled, would have framed the case around misconduct ... as to which there is no factual defense or legal ambiguity....

But then Senate Republicans would have fallen back on the fallacious argument conservatives keep making: that Nancy Pelosi is personally responsible for security at the Capitol, so the riot was all her fault. Here it is again, from Newsmax TV's star anchor:

Where the Hell were the Cops? How did these people get in? Those cops ultimately report to the speaker —-how did SHE let this happen? That’s the Question We Need Answered !!! pic.twitter.com/Lwvt3hwOdg

— Greg Kelly (@gregkellyusa) February 11, 2021

They would have mainstreamed Gateway Pundit-style insinuations that the real rioters were from Antifa. They would have blamed the mayor of D.C. They would have declared that Democrats are hypocrites -- they want to defund the police one day and then they're impeaching the president for a lack of law enforcement response the next! They would have piously argued that it's unfair to blame Trump when the individuals in the Capitol are to blame. They would have sliced and diced this so many different ways that the none of the senators who'll ultimately vote to acquit in the current trial would have had a moment's hesitation about voting to acquit in the hypothetical one.

Trump's acquittal will not be Democrats' fault. It will be Republicans' fault.