Mediaboss Marketing

On Wednesday, the Senate will most likely vote to acquit President Trump. The vote should send shock waves through our democracy. It is not so much that the Senate is absolving him of all charges of obstruction of Congress and abuse of power; the shock waves should emanate from how his Republican allies go about it. By rejecting a conviction, the party will demonstrate that it believes anything goes in winning elections.

Most Republican senators have insisted that in pressuring Ukraine to investigate the Bidens, Mr. Trump did nothing wrong. A few say he crossed a line, but they have never explained why his actions fall short of conviction, or what it would take for them to consider a conviction.

Rather than reining in a president who clearly abused his power for personal gain, most Republicans have conceded to Mr. Trumps overarching defense: that his re-election would serve the public interest. That argument was enough, for his Senate allies, to override campaign finance laws and the norms of governance that have prevailed in our country until this presidency.

This defense is a natural outgrowth of the unitary executive theory, a legal doctrine advanced by apologists for the imperial presidency, including Attorney General William Barr. It was Alan Dershowitz, the Harvard law professor representing Mr. Trump, who gave this idea its most outrageous frame: Every public official that I know believes that his election is in the public interest, he said. And if a president does something which he believes will help him get elected in the public interest, that cannot be the kind of quid pro quo that results in impeachment.

If this were simply verbiage in service of his client, one might almost forgive Mr. Dershowitz for his claim. But Republican senators and other party leaders have embraced this theory as if our Constitution was in fact a pact to establish a monarchy. Roy Blunt of Missouri, a close ally of the Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, declared that Mr. Dershowitz had said the presidents actions were not impeachable, and I dont disagree with that.

In other words, the core message from Senate Republicans is this: No matter how dangerous or incompetent any president might be, he or she has only to think that remaining in office serves our nation to justify any act to stay there.

This is a five-alarm fire for democracy. The Republican Party has aggressively sought to rig elections in its favor, including voter purging, vote suppression and gerrymandering. Paul Weyrich, co-founder of the Heritage Foundation, the American Legislative Exchange Council and the Moral Majority, explained his support for vote suppression at an evangelical Christian campaign rally for Ronald Reagan in 1980. Many of our Christians have what I call the goo goo syndrome good government, he said. They want everybody to vote. I dont want everybody to vote. Elections are not won by a majority of people.

That statement has been the foundation of the Republican approach to elections ensure that only the people you want to vote can vote, and if you cant win even with vote suppression, look the other way when Russians intervene. Mr. Trumps defense in the Senate is in keeping with this no-holds-barred approach. Anything in service of victory is permissible.

This impeachment is as much about what happens in November as it is about Mr. Trumps actions. With the Republicans in thrall to a demagogic leader, will it accept the results if Mr. Trump loses the election? Will Mr. Trump vacate the White House next Jan. 20, or will he claim that the election was a fraud?

Or even more likely, will allies in swing states like Florida, Ohio and Arizona contest results in favor of Mr. Trumps opponent? We have already seen how Floridas Republican governor and Legislature have thwarted the will of the voters, who last year approved a ballot initiative to allow former felons to vote: They enacted the equivalent of a poll tax, in defiance of the Constitution.

The time for those who believe in our Constitution and our democracy to act is now. We must prepare in every possible way to counter efforts by the Republicans and Mr. Trump to rig the coming election and to nullify it if they lose. While the statements during impeachment and the lock-step way the Republicans follow Mr. Trump might look like the temporary aberration of a party in the grip of a cult of personality, the roots of this anti-democratic impulse are much deeper. What Mr. Trump has laid bare is the true emptiness of the Republican Partys commitment to fair elections and its antagonism to the rules of democracy.

If we dont work now to prepare the public and the machinery of voting around the country for an end-run around our representative form of government, we shall be akin to nations like Russia, where elections are just cover for autocracy.

Caroline Fredrickson (@crfredrickson) is the author of The Democracy Fix: How to Win the Fight for Fair Rules, Fair Courts and Fair Elections and a senior fellow at the Brennan Center for Justice.

The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. Wed like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And heres our email: letters@nytimes.com.

Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram.

View original post here:
After Acquittal, Its Anything Goes for the Republicans - The New York Times