WASHINGTON _ In 1999, a rank-and-file Republican senator named Mitch McConnell was, in his words, the "go-to guy" for explaining how arcane Senate rules could influence the outcome of Democratic President Bill Clinton's impeachment trial.
"The reason Clinton was not removed from office," McConnell mused in his 2016 memoir, "was that Democrats were able to keep public opinion on their side, framing the impeachment trial as a partisan exercise and arguing the popular view that political investigations are nothing more than politics."
Twenty-one years later, as the Senate majority leader, McConnell is now at the center of another impeachment trial and is using a similar playbook to control the process and shape the narrative to protect his own party's standard bearer, President Donald Trump.
