On August 7, 1974, three prominent Republican politicians (Senator Barry Goldwater, Senator Hugh Scott, and Representative John Rhodes) met with President Richard Nixon in the White House. While they didn’t explicitly advise Nixon to resign, these GOP leaders stated that the negative reverberations of the Watergate scandal, all but assured that he would be convicted and removed from office in a Senate impeachment trial. Nixon resigned from the Presidency the next day.
Currently, most Congressional Republicans appear to be Trump sycophants. Consequently, even as the Trump Presidency appears to be crumbling on a variety of levels, present-day Republican leaders, fearing his wrath, would dare not anger Trump by suggesting that he step down.
In 1957, future President John F. Kennedy, then a Senator from Massachusetts, published the award-winning book Profiles in Courage which examined eight historical instances of U.S. Congressional leaders taking courageous, principled stands. Unfortunately, an updated version of this book, based upon contemporary political realities, might be retitled “Profiles in Cowardice.”
