Never-Trumper Jennifer Rubin has been surprisingly good in her analysis of Trump's dirty deeds and what they mean for the country, consistently calling out the bad guys and standing up for constitutional principles and ethical action.
I wouldn't have called her an optimist, but I think she's erring waaaay on the side of optimism in this comment in her latest column:
[W]e should put aside the assumption that no matter what is in the report Republicans will not turn on Trump and seek his removal. Not until we know what Trump said to Putin, what Manafort and Konstantin Kilimnik discussed, what former White House counsel Don McGahn, Michael Cohen and Michael Flynn shared with Mueller in dozens of hours of discussion and a whole lot more will we be able to predict what Republicans will and will not do.
Why should we put that assumption aside? All the evidence supports that Republicans will never turn on Trump, no matter what.
Since the latest bombshells dropped about the FBI's counterintelligence investigation of Trump as a Russian asset and about how he kept the content of his conversations with Putin secret even from his own most trusted minions, including seizing his own translator’s notes and swearing her to secrecy, all the right-wing commentators I’ve seen have, if anything, doubled down on support of their flatulent orange god-king. There's no evidence Trump did anything wrong, they say. Holding discussions with the Russian leader is just part of his job and perfectly normal. It's the FBI that's corrupt, investigating Trump just because he fired their boss. It's the fake news media that's destabilizing the country, not Trump.
Just face it — there's nothing, nothing, that could be shown or proven that would change these people's support of Trump. For better or worse, they've tied their own fates to his, and if he goes down, they'll go down with him. The same holds for the vast majority of GOP members of Congress. They'll never turn on him. They'll never seek his removal. No matter what.
They'll have to be completely crushed as a party — wiped right out of power — before they even contemplate letting go of the devil they've made their bargain with.