From Jonathan Bernstein:
The most likely outcome may still be a close-to-party-line impeachment in the House and acquittal in the Senate.
But remember that conservative Republicans stuck with President Richard Nixon in 1974 … right up until they didn’t. Trump’s seemingly unanimous support right now is similar to the backing that Nixon had even as his original cover-up collapsed in early 1973; as the Senate Watergate committee hearings dominated that summer; as the Saturday Night Massacre unfolded in October; and as the House judiciary committee debated and voted on specific articles of impeachment in 1974. And then: The smoking gun tape came out and it all collapsed immediately. Even Nixon’s strongest supporter on the judiciary committee, the Jim Jordan of the day, who had just vigorously defended the president during televised deliberations, flipped and said he’d vote to impeach on the House floor.
That suggests Nixon’s support was never as solid as it seemed. Which in turn suggests we just can’t know how firm Trump’s support is among congressional Republicans this time.
I clicked over to read Bernstein’s full post. I think, though, that he’s ignoring fundamental differences between the Nixon case and this one. The Senate Republicans of today aren’t Trump loyalists — that’s not the issue. The issue is that they’re abject cowards. Since Trump first started running for the Republican nomination, at every stage Republican leaders have shied away from confronting him. So we don’t just have their apparent stance during impeachment to go on — we have a four-year pattern of behavior.
Any Senate Republican who votes to remove Trump will have to answer to his hordes of fanatical, stupid, and in many cases violent followers. Most of them are from red states which have a solid pro-Trump majority. They won’t turn against Trump unless their constituents do, and I don’t see that happening.
I have to agree with Infidel on this.
Even if we go to the proposition that Trump-base opinion will change, as Nixon-base opinion changed, the evidence goes against it. The information bubble that encases Republican citizenry did not exist, or at least was not nearly as pronounced, during the Nixon era.