Thread by @ezraklein

So last night I was on @allinwithchris and I realized I don't know how to communicate how constitutionally dangerous the Senate situation is right now.

We're not arguing over what Trump did. We're arguing over whether Republicans *want to know* what Trump did.

Sometimes this whole saga feels like a thought experiment where we keep layering on more and more extreme conditions to see how broken the Republican Party really is.

Okay, but what if Trump releases a call record in which he says Biden's name repeatedly?

Okay, but what if we also have him tell Ukraine and China to investigate Biden on TV?

Okay, but what if we have Republican appointees testify that he did it to the House?

Still nothing? Wild. Okay, how about this:

We get John Bolton, hero of the America right, scourge of liberals, to say that he will testify, under oath, that he personally heard Trump say the aid was contingent on Ukraine going after the Bidens.

John Bolton.

I mean, surely?

And the GOP's answer is...they don't want to hear it? That these are unsourced allegations, and their official position is they refuse to hear from the source directly?

Even when that source is John $*%&#@# Bolton? The guy they've been to the ramparts to defend?

How can you look at this and say the Republican Party isn't breaking our constitutional design and creating a massive zone of presidential corruption?

It's not that they've gotten all the evidence and they just truly believe Trump didn't do it.

It's that they don't want to know, because the more they know, the more undeniable it is that Trump did it.

McConnell's move in all this has been to create such certainty around acquittal that it's tiring for people to pay attention because it's so clear how the story ends.

But the story here isn't just impeachment. It's about what Republicans are doing to the political system.

And to be very clear, yes, I have written a book about polarization, and yes, stating the reality of American politics clearly is polarizing.

This is the point of the book: party polarization, at this pitch and intensity, will break American politics. amazon.com/Why-Were-Polar…

If Republicans in Congress can't act like members of Congress first and Republicans second then the system's fundamental design stops working.

We built a system around the competing incentives of branches, not the competing incentives of parties.