Letters to the Editor: You know what the founders feared more than partisan impeachment? A monarch

To the editor: President Trump’s attorneys are correct that the nation’s founders feared partisan impeachments. But they are dead wrong about which side is being partisan.

House Republicans were purely partisan in the face of a clear case for impeachment. At trial, the Senate Republicans were partisan in refusing to gather the facts. And now, those same senators will deny the meaning of the Constitution when they vote for acquittal. In so doing they are installing our democracy’s first elected monarch.

That is what the founders feared even more that partisanship.

Remember, they stood up and pledged their lives, fortunes and sacred honor against such power. Now, congressional Republicans alone have failed to live up to that pledge of honor.

What kind of partisanship is that? It is surely not a responsible one, if we wish to remain “America” to the world and to ourselves.

Gregory Hach, Torrance

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To the editor: I agree 100% with House impeachment manager Rep. Adam Schiff about the need to remove Trump from office.

I am pleased and honored to live in California’s 28th Congressional District and to have met Schiff on numerous occasions. His closing remarks in the Senate were passionate, eloquent and persuasive, and they summed up the case against Trump very well.

Schiff is right: Our country has suffered and will continue to suffer as long as Trump is in office. The repairs that will need to be undertaken once his administration is gone will take years, if not decades, to work.

I hope we as a country can unite and persevere to overcome Trump’s execrable legacy.

Fred Barker, Burbank

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To the editor: Whether the president’s lawyers are unaware or deliberately lying, our laws and our Constitution do not state that voters can decide the fate of an impeached president.

Voters decide elections; senators decide impeachment trials.

The total abdication of our senators to do their job is simply breathtaking. They are relying on the defendant and his core supporters to do their decision making.

So much for their sworn allegiance to uphold the Constitution.

Jill Chapin, Santa Monica

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To the editor: Now that Republican Sens. Lamar Alexander, Marco Rubio and Lisa Murkowski have badly wounded the Constitution while simultaneously criticizing the president, they should do something honorable for our nation and fall on their swords.

These senators should vote to remove Trump from office, and they should do their best to ensure as many other Republicans as possible vote likewise.

If the final vote for removal was 64 in favor against 36 opposed, Trump would remain in office, but the vote to remove would suddenly become “bipartisan,” and the likelihood of who would control the Senate in 2021 would shift (a little) to the left.

By voting for removal, they would confirm to the world that the facts were against Trump, which would (somewhat) chasten him and (slightly) reduce the chance he will cheat in the 2020 campaign, without necessarily wounding the GOP fatally.

Richard J. Martin, San Luis Obispo