“Careful and methodical,” you say? That’s generous. The two articles they rang him up on—the “willful and systemic refusal to comply with the law” and the “breach of public trust”—were vague and based on policy disagreements, not high crimes and misdemeanors, as even some Republicans acknowledged. “This is a terrible impeachment,” Ken Buck, one of three House Republicans to vote against it, said on CNN Tuesday. “It sets a terrible precedent.
They already failed once, last week, because apparently, Johnson and impeachment ringleader Marjorie Taylor Greene didn’t account for the possibility Democrat Al Green might leave the hospital to vote—and they would have suffered another embarrassing defeat Tuesday, even with Steve Scalise back, had two Democrats not missed the vote. Republicans basked in their symbolic triumph Tuesday.