The Constitutional ambiguity of Article II, Section 4, the most political and most seismic of all the founding document's provisions, is what offers Mitch McConnell an easy way out.
The President, Vice President and all civil officers of the United States, shall be removed from office on impeachment for, and conviction of, treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors.
The sitting president has done the Democratic House the favor of a quadfecta, while the Constitution has done McConnell the favor of translucence. The founders failed to imagine a partisan Senate leader as corrupt as the impeachable president, hence no guidance was offered as to the inescapability of a Senate trial following a House indictment.
It's true that McConnell has offered his own guidance. In March he said, "If it [impeachment] were to happen, the Senate has no choice. If the House were to act, the Senate immediately goes into a trial." And this weekend the Senate "Republican leadership," reports HuffPost, released this statement: "There is no way we could somehow bar the doors and prevent the managers from presenting the articles to the Senate. The rules of impeachment are clear on this point."
McConnell's word and that of his leadership mean as much as did Trump's oath of office. The majority leader will do whatever is most politically expedient at any given moment of decision. And the ambiguity of Article II's Section 4 is as helpful to Mitch as was the Article's Section 2: "[… the president] shall nominate, and by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, shall appoint ... Judges of the Supreme Court."
So in some ways the Constitution is a kind of jack-in-the-box; It's full of surprises based on the prejudices, malices and partisanship of the Senate, which the founders simply did not anticipate. They saw the institution as a body of deliberative, independent men, not as a backstop arm of the executive.
Yet the Washington Post's David Von Drehle argues, with significant merit, that Trump's fate "is in the hands of … not the Senate … [but] of Fox News." Its "viewers punch far above their weight in one regard: They are the core of any hard-right primary challenge that might be waged against an incumbent Republican senator."
At present the hard-right core of viewership is square in the network's corner. Recently, host Chris Wallace and correspondent Ed Henry have been struck by the outrageous notion that a president who extorts a foreign nation for his own domestic gain just might be worthy of at least an inquiry. Fox viewers took this development with their usual good grace
Yes!! Chris Wallace needs to go! Plus about 5 others. So disappointed with Fox News. #MAGA2020 #KAG2020
— Molly Barnes (@WalkbyFaith_12) September 29, 2019
Though he had a small following, lukepascal's tweet soon earned "27.3K Likes."
Von Drehle suggests that Fox News is in for some ideological changes, now that Trump-humiliated, "grudge-nursing" Paul Ryan sits on its board with the deputation of nominating future board members. "To have him advising the new Fox News leadership [Rupert Murdoch's son] on strategy and future directions cannot bode well for the aging star of the Donald Trump Show," he writes.
The columnist adds a caveat, however. "As long as Fox News is giving prominence to such cynical remoras as Tucker Carlson and Laura Ingraham, embarrassment alone is unlikely to carry much weight. Fox News will need a plausible alternative story line if it is to bring its glorification of Trump to an end."
Von Drehle sees a possibility that Fox News might promote "Midwestern conservative" and Ryan's former House colleague Mike Pence as that alternative story line. Should the network veer as outlined, Von Drehle then "venture[s] that impeachment has gained the upper hand." I'd venture that ratings-powerhouses Carlson, Ingraham and Hannity would strangle that idea in its crib.
Still, his larger thesis holds: Fox News — and, I would add, the rest of the far-right's cacophonous agitpropers — will lead Republican senators around by their elongating noses, thereby subordinating a once-deliberative body to vapid hysterics.