"The new team of Republicans in the House is likely to be more loyal to President Trump and may be able to forge alliances with economically conservative Democrats who will serve starting next year," Wall Street analyst and investigative journalist Charles Ortel told Sputnik. "Ironically, forging consensus in the House starting in 2019 may prove much easier than it was during the first two years," he added.
The US 2018 midterm elections took place on November 6, the Democrats won in the House with 225 seats versus 200 while the Republican majority expanded its number of US senators.
"In the case of President Trump's historic, unexpected victory, the mainstream press and defeated Democrats literally bayed for blood and whipped up so much resistance that Donald Trump did not even enjoy a customary honeymoon period during the first months of his term," he recalled.
Still, the Republicans' "defeat" in the House of Representatives is not as obvious as it seems.
"Though Republicans lost control of the House, the team that presently serves there includes 'Never-Trumpers' and other establishment Republicans, some of whom did not even seek support in re-election contests," Ortel highlighted. "During his first two years, President Trump could not assure House members that he had the votes required in the Senate to pass legislation, given the staunch opposition of most Senate Democrats, and even that of John McCain, Jeff Flake, and Bob Corker, to pick just three Never-Trump Senate Republicans."
Yet another issue is the Democrats' long-held dream of impeaching President Trump. Ahead of the midterms The Atlantic suggested that if Democrats manage to take control of the House, that would "put them in the position to begin nonstop investigations of the Trump administration" and, probably, "commence impeachment proceedings against President Donald Trump."
On November 8, The New York Times published an op-ed by Tom Steyer, an American billionaire hedge fund manager and the founder of Need to Impeach, eloquently entitled "Why Democrats Must Impeach the President."
"As President Trump continues to accelerate his lawlessness, the new Democratic House majority must initiate impeachment proceedings against him as soon as it takes office in January," Steyer claimed.
According to Ortel, "it is certainly possible that the House of Representatives may pass Articles of Impeachment, though these must be for 'High Crimes and Misdemeanours'."
"So far, I have seen no specific allegations against President Trump for any crime that comes close to approaching the high bar set in the definition of 'High Crimes and Misdemeanours'," the investigative journalist underscored. "Unless new information emerges, any measures passed in the Democrat-controlled House would have to find a two-third's majority (67) vote [in the Senate] to secure conviction — a level that seems unattainable."
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