Impeachment vote is a win-win for Democrats lusting after Marco Rubio’s seat

Marco Rubio. Image via AP.

To mix metaphors, by thus far being neither fish nor fowl in the god awful mess in which President Donald Trump now finds himself, U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio risks falling between the sawhorses in his 2022 reelection bid. And the fall could prove fatal. 

Rubio has repeatedly waffled on the issue of Trump. He has condemned violent protests, but not Trump. He has compared Wednesday’s insurrection to the Black Lives Matter protests. He voted to certify President-elect Joe Biden’s victory, but not before implying questions about the election were warranted. The man has a dilemma, the dilemma has him in a dither, and dithering has a price: by failing to take a clear position and holding it, he may not be Trumpy enough in a primary, and he may be too Trumpy in a general election. This makes his seat one of the national Democrats’ top targets in 2022.

And his Trump related troubles are not over by a long shot. He is going to be forced to continue navigating the dangerous waters roiled by Trump’s role in Wednesday’s insurrection at the U.S. Capitol. Assuming the House approves a second Trump impeachment resolution, which was introduced Monday, it will eventually be taken up in the Senate, where members will debate and vote on whether to remove Trump from office even though he will no longer be in office. 

But that vote will not be an empty gesture. If Trump is convicted by the requisite two-thirds vote, there could be a second vote to ban him from ever seeking federal office again. And this vote would only need a majority to pass. With 50 Democrat Senators, Vice President Kamala Harris presiding and casting the deciding vote in the event of a tie, and 17 Republican Senators having already voted to convict, this would be an outcome on which you could safely bet the ranch.

At the front of Rubio’s troubled mind has to be the aforementioned vulnerability to an attack from the right in a primary if he does not ride the Trump train to the end of the line. The President’s eldest son, Donald Trump Jr., has vowed to find a primary opponent for any Republican who goes against his dad, and Ivanka Trump, the President’s daughter, is already rumored to be considering running against Rubio. If she does not take the plunge, then Rep. Matt Gaetz, an insatiable Trump Kool Aid quaffer and an indefatigable publicity hound, might think himself the man for the job. 

On the other hand, if Rubio does vocally side with Trump on impeachment and votes to acquit despite last week’s deadly attempt to overthrow a duly elected President, there will be be a flaming red T branded on his forehead for the 2022 general election, and for the rest of his life for that matter. Democrats will pound him relentlessly for choosing Trump over country and ambition over integrity. And this would be in addition to the ample ammunition already in their arsenal after four years of him servilely carrying a lot of nasty water for Trump.

Regardless of the outcome of the second Trump impeachment saga, it is a probable win-win for Democrats lusting after Rubio’s seat. If he does vote to convict Trump for incitement of insurrection, he almost certainly will face a bitter primary, with the winner limping into the general election badly wounded. If he doesn’t, the already considerable disdain of Democrat and Independent voters for his manifest lack of principle will be amplified by several orders of magnitude. 

The only upside to this mess for Rubio, provided he survives the gathering storm, is that the Trump insurrection, second impeachment, and whatever happens in the Senate could take Trump out of the 2024 Presidential race on which Rubio has his eye, either as a matter of law or as a matter of fact. But even then Rubio would face a large field of Republican opponents with Trump bona fides superior to his, including his fellow Floridians, Rick Scott and Ron DeSantis. 

Thinking back to 2010, when Rubio was first elected to the Senate as a Tea Party darling who appeared on the cover of Time magazine as the future of the Republican Party, his current predicament calls to mind the warning whispered by a slave in the ear of triumphing Roman generals: Sic transit gloria mundi.