Leaks in the GOP Dam

"How did you go bankrupt?" Bill asked.

"Two ways" Mike said. "Gradually, and then suddenly." 

"What brought it on?" 

"Friends." said Mike. I had a lot of friends. False friends."

        Ernest Hemingway, The Sun Also Rises

Donald Trump will probably get through this and survive. He might even thrive and win re-election. He still has his red wall, the votes of the GOP Senators who want to keep their seats, protected by the 85%-90% support Trump has from GOP voters, enforced by the scorched earth criticism Trump unleashes on GOP critics, and cocooned in the GOP media silo.

Trump is safe, for now. 

There is a lesson in the OJ Simpson trial.  Trump is adamant in selling the proposition that Democrats are illegitimate in their prosecution of him and his persecution is the real impeachment story. We saw that strategy work. Sometimes a jury distrusts law enforcement and the prosecution so much that it ignores overwhelming evidence and latches onto something. The LA police were dirty; maybe they framed him. There was his DNA, sure, but maybe it was planted. It looked like his footprints, sure, but it could have been someone else's Bruno Magli shoes at his ex-wife;s home. Maybe he innocently cut his hands on a broken glass the night of the murder.  After all, the gloves--maybe--didn't fit, so they acquit. 

The jurors saw what they wanted to see.

Click: Let no one break ranks

Now that Ambassador Taylor has testified, putting context onto the released quasi-transcript of Trump's July Ukraine call, plus text messages, plus Mulvaney's "get over it" concurrence that of course that Trump wanted Biden investigated, and Trump himself admitting it and doubling down saying he wanted China to do it as well, Democrats have their case. But what they don't have is their conviction. 

There is still the shell around Trump, people who are unwilling to see what is before their eyes. They see Democrats they don't trust, and they see a potential frame job by the foreign service Deep State. They have group solidarity, secure in seeing only what other Republicans see, and are afraid of getting the smack down visited on Jeff Flake, Bob Corker, Paul Ryan, Mark Sandford, Bill Weld, Michael Cohen, Anthony Scaramucci, Jim Maddis, Shepard Smith. All of them are out of their jobs. And the new guy, Mitt Romney, whom Trump derides as a whiney turncoat, a rejected job seeker, a loser who choked.

Click: 45 second ad, using Pence's words against Trump.

Trump needs GOP officeholders all agreeing the important thing is the Democrats and the frame job, not the evidence of bribery, quid pro quo, and a double down confession. If people look around, they see guilty behavior. The key is not to look.

I

Only false-friend disloyal Republicans can hurt him, because they give Republicans permission to look.

Bill Kristol is a never-Trumper, but he is a Republican and he is spreading through his twitter feed and TV appearances what must not be said, that Trump is guilty and a bad Republican. There is a second, 60 second ad, again using Pence: Click: "Corruption won't make America great again."

That is the dangerous thing: Republican faces saying Trump is guilty.

Republicans for the Rule of Law (http://www.ruleoflawrepublicans.com)  is a group now running ads using the video of well known Republicans--Senators Graham, Rubio, Lankford, and Blunt--against themselves and Mitch McConnell, urging stronger election security and contradicting the Trump position on Russian interference in the 2016 election.

Click: 60 second ad.

They are running other ads urging Republicans to be devoted to the Constitution, not to Trump, quoting a GOP Congressman back during the Nixon impeachment era saying "It is we, not the Democrats, who must be demonstrating we are capable of enforcing the high standards we would set for them."

The ad ends: "Republicans stood for the rule of law then. They should stand for the rule of law now."

Again, Republicans saying not to be willfully blind.

Charles Sykes is a conservative commentator and former talk show host who founded The Bulwark (thebulwark.com), a prolific news and aggregation site devoted to conservative principles in the tradition of Ronald Reagan. It creates a drumbeat of opposition to Trump's abandonment of presidential norms.

So far these media voices are tiny compared to the tidal wave of talk radio and Fox, but they are the one thing that could cause a sudden change in Trump's fortunes. They are voices of self-identified Republicans breaking ranks.  

Trump considers them false friends. First a few, then the deluge.