When the Ukraine scandal burst into the news, a widespread consensus agreed that the allegations were deeply improper, and quite likely impeachable. “I think it would be wildly inappropriate for an American president to invite a foreign country’s leader to get engaged in an American presidential election. That strikes me as entirely inappropriate,” pronounced Republican Senator Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania. “If there is evidence of a quid pro quo, many think the dam will start to break on our side,” one Republican told the Washington Examiner in September. “Maybe if he withheld aid and there was a direct quid pro quo,” add another. Even a sycophant like Lindsey Graham conceded at the time that he might support impeachment “if you could show me that, you know, Trump actually was engaging in a quid pro quo, outside the phone call, that would be very disturbing.”
Even as the White House has withheld most documentary evidence and testimony from central figures like Mick Mulvaney, Rick Perry, Rudy Giuliani, and Trump himself, the case has been proved beyond any sliver of a doubt. Trump and his agents communicated to Ukraine through a variety of channels that they intended to trade a presidential meeting and military aid for the announcement of investigations into Trump’s domestic rivals. The terms of the deal are so obvious that even a fraction of the evidence was sufficient to establish it.
The primary effect of the proliferation of evidence upon the Republicans has been to persuade them to change their standards as to what is acceptable presidential conduct. Oklahoma representative Tom Cole said in September that the whistle-blower complaint is “a serious matter, and I will continue to thoughtfully consider information as it becomes available.” But Cole quickly decided that he was tired of considering information thoughtfully. “It doesn’t matter much anymore,” he said last month.
Many members of the mainstream media have defined this response as “partisanship.” A New York Times analysis noted that the parties in Monday’s hearings “presented radically competing versions of reality. CNN’s Chris Cillizza called the hearings “a bunch of adults yelling at one another over matters that almost no one watching understood or cares about.”
The reality is that the parties have, if anything, converged on a shared set of facts, at least as it pertains to the Ukraine scandal. Whereas Republicans previously refused to connect the dots that showed Trump’s Ukraine extortion, they have increasingly accepted reality. They have simply redefined the unacceptable as acceptable.
Ted Cruz, appearing on Meet the Press Sunday, denied that Trump had engaged in a high crime or misdemeanor, without denying the underlying conduct. “I believe any president, any Justice Department,” he insisted, “has the authority to investigate corruption.”
The U.S. government has procedures in place to ascertain whether recipients of foreign aid have taken adequate steps to police corruption, and Ukraine passed the test. Indeed, Ukraine’s government is in the midst of a sweeping reform era, which is precisely why Trump — whose allies are working to recorrupt it — greeted the new regime so suspiciously. The “authority” Cruz is defending is ad hoc power to call any political opponent “corrupt” and demand an investigation. If Trump wants to ask Cuba to investigate Rafael Cruz for taking payments to help cover up the murder of John F. Kennedy Jr., by Ted Cruz’s reckoning, he has every right to do so.
Impeachment Is Partisan Because the GOP Changed Its Mind
re oppo stuff. I'd like to see the documentation on all that.
At least for me, i think drumphs constant lying, cruelty, greed, dangerous policies, etc- has "drowned out " the background noise of CU. And with Supremes as they are good luck gettin that changed for now. 
