Weirdest defense I've heard in a long time

I was listening to the impeachment hearings off and on yesterday. Admittedly, I didn't hear the entire thing, but as far as I could tell the Republican defense of President Trump's behavior comes down to:

• 1. Yes, there was an attempt to do something sleazy, but it didn't work so the attempt doesn't count;
• 2. Yes, President Trump would like to get some dirt on the Bidens but so far all he's got are rumors so it doesn't count; and
• 3. It's all Obama's fault.

Holy wah. Odds are because the Senate has a Republican majority it doesn't matter much what the House hearings decide, i.e., just how many counts of impeachable offenses they come up with, because Moscow Mitch will make sure none of them stick. Nonetheless, is this the image they really want to project going into 2020 -- the President tried to commit a crime (extortion) but because he's an incompetent doofus it doesn't count? Vote for Trump, the man who's too stupid to know what he's doing?

I do find myself wondering just how many counts the Democrats will decide to pursue. People in general don't seem to realize it, but Trump manages to do something that's technically an impeachable offense on almost a daily basis. You know, despite the phrasing about "high crimes and misdemeanors," an impeachable offense doesn't have to be criminal. It just has to be something that demonstrates you're unfit to hold office.

Abusing the power of the presidency for personal gain, for example, might not qualify as a crime in the same way encouraging a burglary did back in the days of Watergate, but openly promoting your son's book so he'll sell more copies is certainly an abuse of power. Encouraging people to patronize his resorts is an abuse of power. Inciting his supporters to commit violent acts is both an abuse of power and possibly criminal. Trump has such a bad habit of opening his mouth, babbling incoherently, and then inserting his foot that if the Democrats really want to they can come up with a list of counts that will run longer than a typical CVS drugstore receipt. Keep in mind that one reason (9 counts worth) that Andrew Johnson wound up impeached was he fired a cabinet secretary Congress thought he should keep. Not a crime, but it pissed enough Congress critters off that Johnson almost wound up out of office.

Heck, Trump doesn't even have to open his mouth. All he has to do is continue tweeting out stupid stuff while in the john in the wee hours of the morning.

But, circling back to the three approaches the Republicans seem to be taking (extortion attempt failed, Trump's so dumb he shouldn't be held accountable, and it's the Obama administration's fault), the last one amused me the most. That's the fallback for every Trump supporter, just like it is for Trump himself. The only thing missing was an explicit reference to Hillary's emails.

I hadn't planned to listen to much of the hearings, but after listening to Daniel Goldman's skillful questioning compared with the poor sap (Steve Castor) laboring for the Republicans I may have changed my mind.  Goldman is good; he was a prosecutor targeting mobsters and Wall Street cheats. He knows how to craft questions. Castor, on the other hand, had obviously been instructed by his Republican bosses to hammer the talking points (Biden, Biden, Biden), which is why I was a bit surprised we weren't treated to Hillary's private server. Poor bastard. Just how many times can you claim the Democrats did something nefarious in the 2016 election when the Democrats lost?

There is actually a distinct contradiction there, the usual cognitive dissonance from the right that we've all come to expect: Trump's bad behavior a few months ago doesn't count because it didn't work, but it's real important to investigate something that might have happened three years ago and failed. How do they manage to push two mutually exclusive ideas without their heads exploding?

In any case, I got the impression that between them Daniel Goldman and Adam Schiff have come close to putting some of the dumber Republicans through the rhetorical equivalent of a wood chipper. And this was just the first day.