Rep. Justin Amash (R-MI) has decided to make Trump’s impeachment a hill to die on and he might just get his wish.

As I shared some weeks back, his reasoning is spotty (at best) and comes with an admission by Amash that he’s relying heavily on subjective political determinations. That’s fine from a legal standpoint. Impeachment is indeed a political process. But it’s pretty nonsensical for a Republican to decide he wants to impeach a Republican president because of a breach of the “public trust” and other completely arbitrary measures that have never been used before.

Impeachment has historically been pushed to go after actual criminal activity. While Amash can technically support impeachment for any reason, it should surprise no one that Republicans wouldn’t take kindly to him deciding to wield it as a political weapon. Those maneuvers are usually reserved for the opposition party.

Now, it looks like Amash may be in search of a new job come 2021.

Independent PPC polling finds @justinamash down 49%-33% to @RepJimLower in MI-3 GOP primary.

— MIRSnews.com (@MIRSnews) June 11, 2019

Play stupid games, win stupid prizes.

While some commentators on the right will decry this as proof of that Trump voters are just out to punish anyone who opposes Trump, I think that’s a pretty dumb take. There’s a difference between general opposition on various policy factors and pushing for the impeachment of a President from your own party for specious reasons.

If you are going to do that, you better have rock solid, unquestioned evidence of criminal wrongdoing and Amash doesn’t have that. No one could do what Amash is doing under any President and remain unscathed, nor should they. Anyone on the right pretending it’s crazy for voters to be upset over this needs to step out of their bubble once and a while.

There are some lines you shouldn’t cross and still expect to be part of the team. Amash has crossed that line. Call it whatever, but I think it’s disingenuous to pretend this is unique to Trump or his voters. If this were George W. Bush being targeted, GOP voters would be reacting the same way.

It should surprise no one that Republicans would oppose someone on their own side trying to impeach a Republican President over complaints of decency and hypotheticals over obstruction that don’t pan out. But, as I’ve said before, I think Amash is doing this to raise his profile, not out of any serious principled stand. If that were the case, he’d have called for Obama’s impeachment over various breaches of the public trust and he never did.

Amash may not even end up running for Congress again. It wouldn’t surprise me at all if he bowed out and took the only path he has left to take to save him from irrelevancy, i.e. he’ll try to primary Trump. Sure, he’ll fail spectacularly, but he’ll get plaudits along the way and maybe end up with a gig on MSNBC. That’s something I suppose.

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