Blunt, Hawley, Marshall and Moran side with Trump, making future sedition more likely

All four senators from our region — Roy Blunt and Josh Hawley of Missouri, Jerry Moran and Roger Marshall of Kansas — voted Saturday to acquit Donald Trump of the impeachment charge against him.

Their votes were fundamentally wrong. Yet they were not a surprise: Anyone who expected Hawley or Marshall to approach the impeachment with an open mind was asking for disappointment.

Hawley’s mind is permanently closed, open only in the service of his ambition. He will say or do anything to further his prospects, whether it’s the White House or a bottle of wine from the top shelf. The man who raised his fist in support of the mob that raided the Capitol on Jan. 6 was never going to vote against his coconspirator in the Capitol riot.

Marshall, too, has just one thing in mind: Do whatever Hawley does. The junior senator from Kansas is quickly establishing his lapdog credentials in Washington, and Saturday was no exception. Asking Marshall to express an original opinion was always a bridge too far.

The votes of Sens. Blunt and Moran, on the other hand, seem somehow more disturbing. Their long service gave us reason to hope both would put their country over their party. They failed the test.

Both issued statements Saturday criticizing the seditious riots at the Capitol, but exempting Trump from any sanctions for his obvious role in them.

“Because former President Trump is no longer in office, I voted to acquit,” Moran’s statement said. “Impeachment is not a tool that should be used to settle political scores against a private citizen,” Blunt claimed.

Blunt once taught history. He should know Trump was impeached by the House before he left office. The Senate vote was whether to convict him for igniting the riots. The evidence of that incitement was unambiguous to anyone who knows insurrection when he or she sees it.

And hundreds of scholars have said conviction of a former office holder is constitutional. The Senate voted to adopt that view. Blunt and Moran now seek to justify their vote on a weak technicality. They should not be allowed to duck responsibility so easily.

Both must face voters in two years, and are favorites to win. Perhaps they voted to acquit because they fear primary challenges from the Trumpistas in their party. If so, their votes are not only wrong, but also display a troubling political cowardice we should never forget.

This is true in narrow terms. During the impeachment debate, the Senate voted to approve a Congressional Gold Medal for Eugene Goldman, the Capitol Police officer who courageously diverted rioters away from senators and staff on Jan. 6.

Asked to demonstrate similar courage, Blunt and Moran demurred.

But it’s true in a broader sense, too. The American republic, we now know, faced an unrelenting assault from Trump and his supporters over the past three months as they sought to overthrow a free and fair election.

The idea of self-government survived only because of the steely courage of hundreds of election workers, secretaries of state, judges, lawmakers and governors of both parties who resisted, often at great political and personal risk, the former president’s theft.

The republic survives because of their bravery. But it was a close call. Had one or two judges, or a governor or two joined in Trump’s piracy, the American democratic experiment might well have died over the last three months.

Next time, we may not be so lucky.

And there will be a next time. The votes of Hawley, Moran, Blunt, Marshall and their cowardly colleagues ensure it. They have said, in clear language, that corrupting an American presidential election — and then provoking a riot to stop the count — is perfectly acceptable, merely the settling of a “political score,” as Blunt put it.

When the next riot comes, who will stand for democracy? Not the senators from Missouri and Kansas.

They will not see it that way, of course. They’re already trying to change the subject. But we should not let them do so. The stain of their votes must remain affixed to their names as long as the republic survives, which, given their actions Saturday and over the past four years, may not be much longer.