Delusional Dems think they can convict Trump in the Senate with zero Republican votes

The Impeachment Loophole No One’s Talking About

Trump's impeachment doesn't require 20 Republicans, says Laurence Tribe. It could happen with zero.

A nugget of political arithmetic is suddenly everywhere: “Two-thirds majority.” This is the share of votes required to convict President Trump in an impeachment trial in the United States Senate. That’s 67 senators, if you’re counting—or, in the glass-half-empty variation, the number of Republican senators required to jump ship is 20.

Mostly, these numbers are used to cast doubtful sentiments on the prospect of impeachment. As CNN correspondent Manu Raju reports, convicting Trump “would require support from a two-thirds majority of the Senate—a highly unlikely proposition.” The same numbers, and the same conclusion, have been popularized by Chris Matthews, Rachel Maddow, and Chris Hayes; presidential candidates and members of Congress; USA Today and Reuters, CNBC and Vox’s Matthew Yglesias.

This is especially true among the President’s champions, who cheerfully assure the GOP faithful that Trump’s fortunes are sealed by math. Hans von Spakovsky did that on Fox News this week, when he argued that “67 votes are needed in the 100-member Senate to remove the president…a very high hurdle that’s probably impossible to leap over in the case of President Trump.”

If Fox News is to believed, the 67 figure is ironclad. Airtight. Right?

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