This is what pro-impeachment House Democrats face in the mossback Republican Senate:
"Republicans in the upper chamber, who would serve as Mr. Trump’s jury if House Democrats were to impeach [Trump], reacted to the [Mueller] report’s release with a range of tsk-tsk adjectives like "brash," "inappropriate" or "unflattering." Only Senator Mitt Romney, Republican of Utah, called out the president’s behavior as "sickening."
"Yet no Republican, not even Mr. Romney, a political brand-name who does not face his state’s voters until 2022, has pressed for even a cursory inquiry into the findings by the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, that the president pressured senior officials … to scuttle his investigation. Where Democrats see a road map to impeachment, Republicans see a dead end."
I consider myself what you might call an ethical pragmatist. Fighting lost causes may be an idealist's dream, but in politics, it's disastrous. I learned this at an early age from studying Lincoln's political approach to his hatred of slavery. He knew the North would never sign on to abolition as a war aim, until the war of union had been secured, which the dubious victory at Antietem served. I also learned it from FDR's battle for the passage of Social Security. Many of his idealistic allies in Congress argued that universal heathcare should accompany passage of the bill, but Roosevelt understood that Republican and conservative Democratic opposition would only destroy the principal objective.
"Incrementalism" is but a four-letter word among committed, activist progressives. Yet as s political approach, it historically has been the most progressively successful. The thoughtful, conservative-progessive approach of devastating Trumpism through the electoral process, rather through the imprudent approach of impeachment and doomed removal, will prove the rule.