When the final vote tally on a formal resolution governing the impeachment inquiry concluded on Thursday with a party-line split — all Republicans present voted against the resolution, and all but two Democrats voted for it — one could practically hear the squeak of excitement from the mainstream media pundit class. Here was an opportunity to run with a “partisan polarization” narrative that neatly sidesteps the substantive disagreement between the two parties.
The situation is simple: The Republican Party, both its politicians and its voters, has collectively decided that it’s fine for Donald Trump to use his office to run an illegal extortion scheme against a foreign leader in an effort to cheat in the 2020 election. The moral rot of the Republican Party, and its cultist loyalty to a criminal president is the sole reason for this situation. Democrats are — rather too reluctantly! — trying to do something to stop the bleeding.
But to read mainstream news coverage, one would think the real problem is that both sides are irascible and bitterly divided, and that there’s some reasonable solution that involves everyone joining hands and finding some way to compromise.
Full story over at Salon
