If they do not, then the door opens to indict and try sitting presidents on criminal charges.
For decades, the argument for not indicting a sitting president has been that the remedy for presidential malfeasance is impeachment and removal from office. But if inciting and orchestrating an attempted insurrection is not worthy of impeachment and removal, then what is?
What criminal acts of a president would warrant removal, if sedition is not enough? Does he have to be caught, on camera, handing over state secrets to the Russians? Strangling his wife in the Lincoln Bedroom? Raping the vice-president's dog?
If sending a mouth-foaming mob to the Capitol to kill the vice-president and to prevent the certification of an election isn't enough to warrant removal, then the impeachment provision of the Constitution, as it applies to presidents, is a dead letter.
Along other lines, I would argue that every Senator who lines up with Trump on this issue has betrayed his oath of office. Lindsey Graham is a spineless weasel, true. Josh Hawley and Ted Cruz are flat-out traitors, who will be remembered and condemned by history for what they did. Those three are beyond redemption, they are now and will for ever be pond scum, a stain on the Senate as an institution.
The rest of the Republicans have a chance to repair their reputations, but I fully expect that few of them will have the guts to do it. They are, almost all of them, craven cowards. Trump has their number, all right.
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