Four More Years?

   Supporters chanted "Four more years" as the president began his State of the Union address to a joint session of Congress Tuesday evening.
   It was just one of the signals Team Trump sent to the conservative base that their leader wants to stay on the job.
   But perhaps the strongest signal was when Trump awarded the presidential Medal of Freedom to Rush Limbaugh, the ultra-conservative talk show host with an audience of millions. The award was made live on national television during the speech.
   The award came one day after Limbaugh announced that he has stage four cancer.
   Awarding the nation's highest civilian honor to Limbaugh live during prime time on national television will certainly please conservatives, but liberals will see it as a political ploy to distract from the impeachment issue and refocus voter attention on re-election.
   Next comes a vote in the Senate on whether to convict the president of the impeachment charges, thereby ordering him out of office.
   Many observers believe that's not likely to happen, since a two-thirds vote in the Senate is required, and even though Republicans admit that he did in fact say and do the things listed in the impeachment charges.
   Some observers also suggest that even if the Senate does vote to convict, the president may refuse to leave. That would cause a major crisis, both nationally and politically as well as constitutionally. The alternative may be that the Senate vote a formal censure of the president, an expression of their disapproval but short of ousting him from office.
  Typically, the president's speech was interrupted repeatedly by applause, but observers stopped counting the number of interruptions several presidents ago after it became clear that the interruptions were not spontaneous but were led by members of the president's team.
   This year, the president's speech was punctuated by applause after nearly every sentence. Moreover, the applause did not gradually subside, but stopped instantly, a clear sign that it was being led by a single conductor.