If he resigned, he would be quitting. If he was impeached, it would be "fake news media and all the dumb liberals that bought it forced me out".

The polling looks terrible, their donors are furious, and natsec is becoming a real issue...but if they can just keep it together for a few months, then it won't all have been for nothing.

One of Mitch's McConnell's big talking points right now is that they need to pass the health care bill ASAP. He knows their window is closing.

The only way Republicans will ever even think of moving against Trump is if polling tells them they should. Polls are bad right now but I think they need to become catastrophic for them to feel safe turning on him.

I think there's a lot of equivocating taking place right now, just like there was at multiple points during the campaign when large numbers of Republicans would speak out against him and it would feel like, "this is the tipping point when the party finally abandons him", but it never quite happened.

And Stephen Miller is writing his Islam speech.

Set balls for maximum sweat. Engage.

This is distraction stuff the media needs to ignore. I mean report on it, sure. But devote 95% of their space to Russia/Flynn/FBI/Comey stuff.

I want to see how badly this goes off the rails in the coming weeks and months. Don't make it stop!

Oh man, fuck you for this. Because voters have the attention span/memory of a gnat and this will happen. Shit. It's only 8:30 in the morning! I was having a good day!
This is on my wall at work.

That's awesome

As soon as Republicans smell blood in the water they'll act out of their own self-interest. This presidency has been an unmitigated disaster and they all know it, yet have been holding out in the hopes of advancing their agenda. At some point that becomes self-defeating, and they'll all start grandstanding against Trump in order to make a name for themselves.

This is probably it--it's incumbency, incumbency, incumbency. I've seen a lot of retweets with sentiments such as "History will remember your names!" as if that's what House and Senate GOPers care about at all.

The more I think about it, the more Republicans should be eager to dump Trump. If they do it, they get Mike Pence, who is likely a more reliable ally to their cause anyway. And the sooner they do it, the more time they have to rehabilitate their image before the 2018 midterms, one in which their map is really favorable.

Sure, Trump could whine and threaten to go third party, but he's not savvy enough to build a coalition to wreak havoc in 2018, and by 2020 the GOP has an incumbent president as an obvious nominee.

They're ready. It's just about stalling until the agenda is pushed through. That's why they are increasingly embracing an independent prosecutor...that's a process that takes time....more than enough for them to pass health care.

I think people place too much emphasis on how they defend him to cameras. Spin for media is basically nonconsequential to actual decision being made. At the end of this thing, they'll still be finding ways to defend him while they celebrate in private.

They can push the agenda through just fine with Pence--that's the easy part. Most of the problems the GOP are having now with legislation have to do with Congress than the president. But things get even tougher for them in Congress if Trump's unpopularity causes them to lose seats.

Republicans basically have the following ambitions right now:

1. Get the agenda pushed through
2. Keep the fallout of all this limited to the WH
3. Don't let the Democrats come out of this looking like heroes
4. Don't look like they helped bring down a president popular with their base

Items 3 and 4 represent the fine line that they are testing now. "How do we allow this to happen, not get hurt by it, and even use it to rally the base in 2018?"

amen

Thoroughly disagree. Once you hit presidential removal territory agendas stall and stumble. It's also terrible optics to be seen as pushing ideas into law that many people perceive to be the president's by design, when that president is being removed from office. Lastly, they've been counting on a lot of independent voters blaming Trump, not them, for unpopular health and tax plans.