The question of impeaching Donald Trump is about replacing the toxic partisanship of today’s Republican party with America’s traditional rule of law. It has become a constitutional imperative.

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Since Richard Nixon, Republican presidents have pushed the envelope of acceptable behavior under the guise of patriotism, and Democrats have permitted their encroaching lawlessness on the grounds of civility, constantly convincing themselves that Republicans have reached a limit beyond which they won’t go. Each time they’ve been proven wrong.

Nixon resigned in 1974 because his attempts to cover up his involvement in the Watergate burglary made his obstruction of justice clear. Republican leaders warned Nixon that if the House of Representatives impeached him, the Senate would convict. Republican congressmen of the time believed in the rule of law.

Gerald Ford’s subsequent pardon of Nixon was perhaps given in that spirit: when the law rules, it permits mercy. But the absence of a humiliating public exposure of Nixon’s participation in Watergate, and the lack of a permanent bipartisan condemnation, gave Nixon loyalists cover to argue that he wasn’t guilty of crimes. Instead they claimed Nixon had been hounded out of office by outlandish liberals determined to undermine him and the country.

Ever since, Republican extremists have employed this rhetoric whenever they break the law or erode constitutional norms.

When Ronald Reagan’s administration was exposed for having illegally sold arms to Iran to raise money covertly for the Contra rebels fighting the Nicaraguan government, Reagan acknowledged that the evidence was damning – yet defended the principle behind the scheme. Reagan’s successor, George HW Bush, pardoned the six leading figures of the Iran-Contra affair because, he said, “whether their actions were right or wrong”, they were motivated by “patriotism”. The investigation into their actions was “a criminalization of party differences”.

Yet, faced with the popularity of Democratic president Bill Clinton, who threatened to undermine conservative efforts to unwind the activist government Americans had supported since the 1930s, Republicans led by the House speaker, Newt Gingrich, did precisely what Bush Sr had ostensibly warned against. They sought to undercut Clinton by impeaching him for high crimes and misdemeanors after he lied under oath about an extramarital affair. (The public recognized that the charges were politically motivated, Clinton’s popularity only rose, and the Senate ultimately voted to acquit.)

But when George W Bush, a Republican, took office, Republicans once again deferred to executive lawlessness. In order to justify the 2003 invasion of Iraq, administration officials falsely argued that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. To silence opposition, a member of the administration unmasked a CIA officer. “Scooter” Libby, chief of staff to Dick Cheney, was ultimately convicted of perjury and obstruction of justice in the ensuing investigation; no one was held criminally responsible for the disinformation used to justify the Iraq war, which has killed hundreds of thousands of people.

During the Obama administration, partisanship once again trumped the law. Republican leaders under the Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell, set out to thwart Democrats – first by refusing to cooperate in crafting legislation, then by refusing to consider a Democratic supreme court nomination as required under the US constitution.

The Republican-controlled Senate will almost certainly not vote to remove Trump from office no matter how convincing the evidence

Even before the 2016 election, Republican officials told reporters that they planned to impeach Democrat Hillary Clinton as soon as she was elected for her misuse of an email server or her ties to the Clinton Foundation. McConnell then led Republicans in refusing to join President Obama and Democratic leaders in a bipartisan statement alerting the public that Russian intelligence was attempting to throw the 2016 election to the Republican candidate, Donald Trump. This forced Democrats to accept the tilted playing field to avoid the appearance of partisanship.

Democrats kept largely quiet in the face of such bullying, afraid that Republican rhetoric would alienate voters and hurt their chances in 2016. Then Trump won.

The same Republicans who had threatened to impeach Hillary Clinton remained silent when, immediately after his surprise victory, Trump refused to abide by laws about emoluments or nepotism, openly profiting from the presidency and filling the White House with personal relatives. They continued to remain silent when Trump fired the FBI director, James Comey, who was investigating Russian interference in the 2016 election, then pointedly pardoned Scooter Libby, saying he was “treated unfairly”. They did not protest in February 2019 when the Trump administration openly defied the law by refusing to give Congress a required report on Saudi involvement in the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi.

By May of this year the White House was refusing to honor any congressional subpoenas on the grounds that “it’s very partisan – obviously very partisan”, as Trump told the Washington Post.

When the House committee on ways and means demanded Trump’s tax returns under a law that leaves no wiggle room, Steven Mnuchin, the treasury secretary, nonetheless refused to deliver them, saying he saw no “legitimate legislative purpose” for such a request. An attempt by the executive branch to dictate to the legislative branch, the only branch of the American government that has the unilateral power to make law, is shocking, but Republicans stayed quiet. They also stayed quiet when Trump used declarations of national emergency to override laws passed by Congress, and on Monday the Trump White House asserted in court that Congress had no authority to determine whether the president has committed crimes.

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Yet only one congressional Republican – Michigan’s Justin Amash – has called for impeachment.

Special counsel Robert Mueller, investigating Russian interference in the 2016 election, provided ample evidence that the president should be investigated for obstruction of justice in his attempt to quell the Russia investigation by firing Comey and urging aides to lie. At the same time, Mueller reminded Americans that the constitution charges Congress with presidential oversight. Indeed, under current Department of Justice policy, a sitting president cannot be indicted; congressional oversight is the only way to rein in a lawless president.

The Republican-controlled Senate will almost certainly not vote to remove Trump from office no matter how convincing the evidence of his criminality. But the process of impeachment by the House and a trial by the Senate would undercut the idea that prosecution is equivalent to partisanship. It would be a vivid illustration that American presidents – Republicans as well as Democrats – are bound by the rule of law and the US constitution.

The nation did not need such a demonstration in 1974: Republican leaders of that era forced their own president from office. Today’s Republicans will not do the same, and their complicity threatens to turn America into an autocracy.

Trump is certainly aware of the power that acquiescent Republicans have afforded him and that as soon as he is out of office, he can be charged with crimes. He recently told reporters he was different from Nixon because Nixon left. “I don’t leave,” Trump said. “Big difference. I don’t leave.”