GamingHyena posted:

Republicans won't vote to impeach Trump due to unpopularity. Even if Trump had something like a 20% approval rating nationally, those numbers by definition will translate into a much higher approval rating among Republicans (say 35-40%). Republicans know Trump, even if impeached, won't go quietly into the night. If they turn on him Trump will tell his supporters Republicans betrayed him and not to vote. The loss of even a relatively small percentage of Republican voters would be enough to flip a huge number of congressional seats and maybe give one or both houses back to the Democrats. Better politically to have your congressional dreams derailed for a few years dealing with Trump's scandals (deferred campaign promises seem to make oddly good fundraising fodder) than risk plunging your party into civil war.

My guess is Trump only runs for one term (telling people America's now Great Again/the Congress and media are so terrible America simply can't be fixed through politics) and retires. Pence, relatively untouched by scandal, runs a standard conservative platform in 2020.