This week brought the most encouraging signs yet that members of the GOP are indeed willing to behave as the framers would have had them do. And they pushed back against Mr. Trump’s increasingly aggressive and increasingly bizarre attacks on Attorney General Jeff Sessions, which were implicitly attacks on independent counsel Robert S. Mueller III. Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa) made it clear that his committee would give the president no opportunity to appoint a replacement to Mr. In the minds of many of Mr. Trump’s harshest critics, especially Democrats, anything short of impeachment constitutes Republican submission to an unfit and illegitimate president. What GOP lawmakers’ first serious steps toward checking and balancing Mr. Trump showed this week, however, is that there is a middle ground, which members of his own party are no longer afraid to explore.

Source: Washington Post July 29, 2017 21:56 UTC