Hours before the U.S. Senate voted to acquit President Donald Trump last week, the aftershocks were already rumbling in Kentucky.
Retired Lt. Col. Amy McGrath, the presumed Democratic front-runner in the 2020 primary for U.S. Senate, had made it clear she would vote to convict the president.
“Even supporters of the president must realize that the conduct of Republican senators during this process was not an act of bravery, but simply a falling in line so that they wouldn’t be challenged in their own primary if they dug too deep,” McGrath said in a statement to The Courier Journal.
“They are now a party drifting about with no moral compass, lost at sea, and unable to recognize right from wrong.”
The comments differed drastically from how McGrath entered the race on national TV when she said her potential opponent, Sen. Mitch McConnell, wasn’t doing enough to help the president.
“McGrath was forced to declare an anti-Trump position, and that’s just going to make it harder for her to say she’d be independent of other Democrats,” said Stephen Voss, a University of Kentucky political science professor.
“It’s just the kind of thing, if you were McGrath, you wish you didn’t have to weigh-in on.”
That is just part of the fallout as Kentuckians of different stripes absorb and reflect on the Senate’s decision to exonerate the president.
Most concur Trump’s grip on the Bluegrass State will tighten as a result and that McConnell will be the immediate beneficiary. Supporters are digging in their heels in spite of a president who enjoys breaking political norms.
“It’s not just activists in the Trump base who are going to be more motivated for Trump 2020 — it’s extended beyond to everyday Americans,” said Sarah Durand, a self-described liberty activist who works for Bluegrass Institute, a conservative-leaning think tank.
“Most people want government focused on good policy, but instead they’re seeing Democrats going to any extreme to try and undo the results of the last election,” she added. “I don’t think that sits well with the average American.”
That’s not how the Rev. David Snardon, a Louisville civil rights leader, sees things when he ponders the trial’s outcome. He said even if the House impeachment didn’t result in Trump being removed from the Oval Office, it served as a moral compass for any voters lost in the political fog.
“The American people need to see what type of president we voted into office,” said Snardon, a Democrat who is running for the state House in 2020. “And as distasteful as Trump is, he really is a mirror image of who we are because not only did we vote him in, we allow him to continue to act and behave the way he’s acting and behaving.”
McConnell is seizing on the celebratory mood among Republicans by casting the acquittal in political terms. On Fox News, he gleefully mocked House Democrats for impeaching Trump as a “stupid” move that will “backfire.”
McConnell’s office stayed busy Friday by promoting a New York Times article about how the GOP leader has become a conservative icon under Trump. The senator’s reelection campaign also got a piece of the action by immediately fundraising off of the president’s acquittal, selling “Game. Set. Mitch.” T-shirts.
But what McConnell and other Republicans noticeably hopscotch are questions about the meat of the impeachment allegations, which centered on Trump holding up military aid while asking Ukraine to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden, a Democratic presidential contender.
“Why is it OK for the president to ask another foreign country to investigate a political rival?” CNN’s Manu Raju asked McConnell at a press briefing.
“Now, Manu, I’ve been responding to you for years,” McConnell said. “And you know that what I’m here to talk about today is the political impact of this.”
The Senate voted 53-47 on the charge that the president obstructed Congress and 52-48 to acquit Trump on the charge that he abused his power, with only Sen. Mitt Romney, R-Utah, crossing the aisle.
Romney made history as the first senator voting to remove a president of his own party, saying what the president did, “was wrong, grievously wrong.”
But there are few Romney Republicans in Kentucky who see the impeachment in those terms, according to operatives and top figures in the state GOP.
“From my perspective, unlike in the past impeachments, here there were no criminal violations,” said attorney Vickie Glisson, a Republican who worked in former Gov. Matt Bevin’s administration.
“When I look at how the Senate voted, I was relieved because I felt if this had been successful, it would have jeopardized our Constitution. There was no crime or misdemeanor alleged here.”
Glisson, who ran against Rep. John Yarmuth (D-KY-03) in 2018, dismissed repeated questions about the appropriateness of Trump’s phone call asking a foreign leader to dig up dirt on Biden.
The allegation takes a backseat to what many supporters argue was a runaway train of bitter partisanship by Democrats behind the impeachment.
“I felt a lot more was at stake than whether ‘do I agree or disagree with the president,’” Glisson said. “Many of us felt the Democrats were abusing provisions of the Constitution because they disagreed with his style or don’t like him. Going forward anytime you disagreed you could now say, ‘have him impeached’ and our government would never get anything done that way.”
Republican consultant Tres Watson, co-host of Kentucky Politics Weekly, a political podcast, said there are a small portion of GOP voters critical of Trump’s actions.
Those people, however, kept quiet because they felt Democrats went too far.
“Both parties are reckoning with this at the moment, and that is: What is the level of disagreement allowed to still be a loyal member of the party?” he said. “You saw it in the president’s press conference. What is the discourse within the family before you have to worry about exorcism?”
Romney, for instance, was the party’s standard bearer when he was the presidential nominee in 2012. He is now facing a backlash among conservatives nationwide for bucking Trump.
The Utah legislature is debating a measure to censure him, and another bill, filed before the impeachment vote, would allow residents to recall him.
Senate Republicans also read the political polls and calculated there was little upside in prolonging the trial with additional witnesses or coming out against the president.
“The Ukraine controversy had been in the news a long time, and the House held hearings long before they sent the impeachment articles,” said Voss, the political science professor. “What we learned is public opinion wasn’t budging very much, and the evidence just wasn’t impressive to people.”
FiveThirtyEight, a website that measures political data, tracked every poll asking about support for removing Trump from office since Oct. 1, 2019. It found at its peak those who favored such a move reached 48%.
Among independent voters, FiveThirtyEight shows, support for kicking Trump out of office reached 43%, whereas 84% of Democrats wanted it and just 9% of Republicans.
McConnell is seeing the dividends of a conservative homecoming, especially among right-wing activists who for years have maligned him as an establishment stooge.
A Quinnipiac University poll in late January of roughly 1,900 registered voters nationwide found McConnell had a net negative 17% approval rating.
The survey showed he held a 33% approval rating as the leader of the Senate, while 50% disapproved.
While still underwater, that trend is an improvement compared to April 2018 Quinnipiac poll when McConnell had a net negative 40% job approval rating. At the time, just 22% thought he was doing a good job, compared to 62% who did not, according to the survey.
“Sen. McConnell, obviously, over the last several elections has had to keep an eye on his right flank to make sure he’s keeping the base happy,” Watson, the political consultant, said. “The impeachment trial probably solidifies any doubt that he’s going to have strong support from that base.”
Kentucky Democrats are conversely reckoning with how the Trump trial has changed the dynamics of their primary contest for Senate as well.
Snardon, the civil rights leader, said die-hard opponents of the president are just as hardened by the trial’s outcome.
“How much is the economy worth having someone who is so vile and amoral that it tears away at the fabric of what it means to be human and decent?” he asked. “There’s more to life than putting money in your pocket, and the way this president has behaved and acted, he really represents the lowest of us, the worst of us and that’s not someone I want representing me.”
McGrath was forced to the left and has had to give up an argument that she is appealing to pro-Trump Kentuckians who disliked McConnell. Other candidates quickly pointed out how they had long held the position Trump should be convicted, and that McGrath’s move was a political calculation.
“I called for the Senate to remove the president months ago,” state Rep. Charles Booker (D-Louisville) who is running against McGrath for Senate, said in a Feb. 5 tweet to a Courier Journal reporter. “I’m encouraged that others are now following my lead. … This isn’t about playing politics — it’s about giving Kentuckians the unwavering moral leadership they demand.”
Political commentator Jonathan Miller, a former state treasurer, said McGrath made it clear she sides with the Constitution, and that it was wise to stand on principle by joining the majority of Democrats who supported impeachment.
“She’s got a real challenge,” Miller said. “It’s a red state and Trump will win Kentucky — I’m hopeful he won’t win the presidency — but it’s an uphill battle so she’s been trying to thread a very thin needle.”
Miller said the impeachment trial likely won’t be the first thing on voters’ minds come November. He said the upside is it has provided Democrats a wake-up call when picking a nominee at either the presidential or Senate level.
“There is no way to stop this president except to beat him at the polls,” Miller said. “No matter what he does, the Republican Senate is going to protect him, so if it’s Bernie Sanders, I hope moderates will hold their noise. And if it is Joe Biden or Mike Bloomberg, liberals will have to hold their noise and understand this is the only way to stop Donald Trump.”
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Written by Phillip M. Bailey. Cross-posted from the
Courier-Journal via the Kentucky Press News Service.