Pro-Trump Republicans are blatantly disregarding oath to deliver 'impartial justice’ — and ‘Americans should be worried’: conservative columnists

As President Donald Trump’s impeachment trial gets underway in the U.S. Senate, most Democrats realize that Trump is almost certain to be acquitted by the Senate’s Republican majority — especially in light of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and other Republicans making it painfully clear that they have no desire to honestly evaluate the evidence. Trump critics Bill Kristol and Jeffrey K. Tulis, in a January 20 article for the conservative website The Bulwark, ask a painful question: do Senate Republicans even take their oath to “do impartial justice according to the Constitution” seriously?

“Does that oath mean anything?,” Kristol and Tulis ask. “Anything at all? Citizens can’t help but suspect the answer is no.”

Kristol and Tulis go on to lament the fact that some GOP senators have been flaunting their intention to disregard their oaths.

“Since the two articles of impeachment were approved by the House of Representatives last month, several Republican senators, following Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, have publicly and expressly disavowed any intention to follow their new oath ‘to do impartial justice’ in the Senate impeachment trial,” Kristol and Tulis explain. “Over the course of American history, many politicians have failed to live up to their oaths. But there aren’t many cases when an elected official publicly promised to disregard the oath prior to swearing to follow it.”

As Kristol and Tulis see it, Trumpism is bringing “corruption” to the Senate.

“Americans should be worried about the state of American politics when they see such corruption from some of our political leaders,” Kristol and Tulis assert. “They should be concerned by this demonstration of how much the corruption of Trump and Trumpism has infected major American institutions, now including the Senate — which is, by design, the most important institutional check against presidential abuses of power.”