David Brooks:

Yes.

I sort of wish we had had — that Republicans had put up what I think is their best case, which was that this doesn't rise to the level of impeachment. They can't make the case it didn't happen. But they could make a case it doesn't rise to the level of impeachment.

Or they could make the case that, if we set this standard, pretty much every president is going to come under impeachment for this. They could go back in history, Iran-Contra, and they could say, look, every president messes up in some very serious way — almost every president, many presidents. And if we set this standard, we will be just impeaching people for years and years.

I don't think Lyndon Johnson, if it — was he held to this kind of standard? You don't — I think you could go down the list and find a lot of presidents who would be impeached. I think that's their best argument.

And they can't really make that argument. But that would — that would have been an interesting case to make.

As for the vote, I was a little surprised how party-line it was, just extremely few defections. And I think, for Democrats, some for whom it's a tough vote, I think, one, the conviction that he really did do it, he really does deserve to be impeached, second, that impeachment is probably not the top issue in their home districts, so they can probably get away with it.

And, third, party loyalty and party-line spirit is now just a dominant force on Capitol Hill.