I know it is not the season for sugarplums dancing in heads. I’ll chalk mine up to shoveling the sidewalk with the temperature at -2°F.
Having dealt with cultish Christians insistent that it is imperative to impose their creed on all people at all times and just happens to benefit themselves, I know their ability to shift gears between whining when caught out and accusing when not. Their 180° turns are not only to save the day but become a part of their long-term strategy by keeping everyone off-stride and more malleable (eternally forgiving; never holding them to account).
That same response is still available to the Republican Senators who will decide the impeachment of DJT (a veritable political poison—DDT). The picture here is an evaluation that the best Republican long-term strategy is to remove DJT from ever running again. Such a decision would allow them to campaign on their integrity of holding one of their own to account and also claim they are running on his policies (even though his policies were disastrous — children caged, environment raped, citizen set against citizen, pandemic response….).
I’m not sure how that would play in the coming mid-term election. Still, current Republican leadership may see it as preferable to defending their acquittal of DJT from the consequences of impeachment and stimulating more Georgia-like organizing that could still overwhelm their next attempts at voter suppression.
I have no way of evaluating this possibility. Still, I would find a conviction on the charge of impeachment easier to deal with in the public discourse and see an acquittal as a continuation of the big lie that has begun to be revealed and will be further revealed through criminal charges.
I mention the above without hope that conviction will occur. It would make a final reckoning more difficult because people will think, once again, that we have turned a corner. No matter what the Senate decides about impeachment, we still have miles to go.