On Oct. 23, House Republicans engaged in a protest to halt the impeachment inquiry into U.S. President Donald Trump by interrupting key interviews and demanding public access to the impeachment investigation. However, the event was largely a publicity stunt, and as Sheryl Stolberg and Nicholas Fandos point out in a recent New York Times article, at least four of the 12 House Republicans who stormed the private interviews already had access to the investigation from their previous committee placements. Not only that, but the inquiry is being held in a very similar way “as has been the case in the preliminary stages of past congressional investigations conducted by members of both parties, including the one Republicans opened during the Obama administration into […] Benghazi.” The extremist Republicans made sure the event was well-publicized by the media, making sure they “ordered pizza and fast food for the throng of reporters assembled to witness their demonstration.” This event and the response to it demonstrates not only the political hypocrisy involved in demanding access to the proceedings, but it also represents how politically uncomfortable moderate Republicans are with the growing case against the President. And they ought to be.

Republicans ought to be worried about a second impeachment inquiry against a president of their own party in modern times, making up one-third of the Republican executive leadership in the last 50 years (inquiries were filed against President Nixon but he resigned before the actual impeachment proceedings began). They should be worried about whatever remains of their fragmented, bigoted moral conscience and ideology since they feel so insecure with their political leadership that they have to blackmail foreign leaders with foreign aid in order to get dirt on Democratic candidates as non-menacing as former Vice President Joe Biden – who has long touted his record of compromise with segregationists in the 1970s. At this point we should not be surprised by the strategy of publicly blocking impeachment proceedings; Republican strategy in recent times, it seems, has mostly consisted of taking the dirtiest, shallowest, route possible, turning politics into a smear campaign against the Democratic Party, and then demanding that their opponents institutionally compromise with their hatred and take the “high road.”

Since the “high road” seems politically challenging to House Republicans, they want nothing to do with the Constitution. The last month has shown that sometimes conservatives can’t even trust the system devised by their beloved Framers to protect them from even the slightest political probe into ethics, even when they do try to pay lip service to the so-called “fairness” of existing institutions. It is not any more shocking that extreme cowardice continues to be shown by Republican Congressman when they seem politically motivated to maintain the current system of locking up immigrant children in cages, and then dig their heels in when it comes to an ethical inquiry against the President. The critical mass is against the President, and the majority of people stand behind the impeachment proceedings. Whether or not we have a Democratic Party willing enough to put on the heat and continue the investigation, regardless of the duplicity of the Republicans in Congress, is yet to be seen.