Democrats haven't made case for impeachment. They should censure Trump instead: Fleischer

If the Democrats' drive to impeach and convict President Donald Trump is going to be successful, they need to persuade Republicans who have misgivings about the president to support their bid to remove him from office.

They have failed.

I know, because I’m one of those Republicans. I voted against Trump in the primary and left my ballot blank in the general.

There is much about Donald Trump that I don’t like or support. There is much about his policies and what he has accomplished that I do.

I haven’t hesitated to criticize the president when he warrants it. From the start I said, often on Fox News, that Trump's July 25 call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky was inappropriate. No president, or member of Congress, should ask a foreign nation to investigate political opponents. It was wrong when the president asked Ukraine to do that.

Trump behavior was unwise

Elected officials and White House aides should stay out of judicial investigative matters. Once they weigh in, they inherently politicize a subject that, in the United States at least, we believe should be guided by the principle that justice is blind.

When a politician calls for an investigation of a political opponent, he or she does not seek a blind outcome. A preferred outcome is sought.

It’s also problematic when a U.S. leader asks a foreign nation, particularly a nondemocratic one, to get involved. There is no guarantee a foreign nation will do what’s right. It's more likely to do what’s in its national interest, regardless of what the facts and truth are.

Over the course of the House impeachment hearings, the witnesses called by Democrats successfully made the case that the president and his top aides wanted Ukraine to investigate the Bidens.

Of course he did. He said so in his “perfect” July 25 phone call. He also, unwisely, publicly called on China to do the same. He once, also unwisely, publicly called on Russia to release Hillary Clinton’s emails if it had them.

The problem the Democrats have is that their impeachment hearings proved a point that almost everyone knows: Trump did it.

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The Democrats, and much of the news media, say the hearings were full of bombshells and smoking guns. But the smoking guns were BBs and the bombshells were duds.

In football terms, Trump deserves a flag for a false start, or maybe unnecessary roughness. But the Democrats want to add up all the penalty flags Trump has earned in three years of his presidency, and they see the Ukrainian phone call as incontrovertible proof that the president should be thrown out of the game.

I, on the other hand, heard nothing that rises to the level of impeachment.

Drop impeachment, censure Trump

If the Democrats were smart, they would drop impeachment and instead vote to censure the president for his phone call and his attempts to link an investigation to the receipt of military assistance and/or an Oval Office visit. I suspect many Republicans would vote for it.

That would be a bipartisan outcome.

But the Democrats can’t stop themselves. Their hatred of the president, driven by their growing liberal base and shortage of conservative or moderate members, has led to this gigantic waste of time that will result in a one-party, partisan impeachment.

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The Democrats fail to understand how anyone, especially those who have misgivings about the president, can’t support impeachment. They don’t accept the point of view that elections are the superior remedy to issues like this. We’re a republic if we can keep it, they like to say.

We’re also, as the Declaration of Independence states, a nation in which the government derives its just powers from the consent of the governed.

The governed should decide what to do with President Trump, not 218 House members and 67 senators as called for under the Constitution. An election, not an impeachment, is the better way of keeping this republic.

As an occasional Trump critic and an occasional Trump supporter, I have a deal for the Democrats: I won’t try to persuade them to support the president if they will stop trying to persuade me to impeach and convict him.

Ari Fleischer was White House spokesman in the George W. Bush administration. Follow him on Twitter: @AriFleischer

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This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Trump impeachment case is weak, but censure could win Republican votes