I love writing about political strategies, I had a good year.

There’s at least one more very big political story coming up soon, and it’s important to understand it and be ready for it.

The next critical political decision will be whether or not to convict Donald Trump at his impeachment trial for supporting the insurrection at the U.S. Capitol.

There’s a solid chance Mitch Connell will throw Trump under the bus to save his own hide and the future of the Republican Party.

He might just vote to convict Donald Trump. That might bring in enough Senate Republican votes to convict him and dramatically end his political career.

It’s nothing personal, Donald, strictly politics.

Sometime over the next few weeks, Nancy Pelosi will send her article of impeachment to the Senate,  which will be bound by law to begin an impeachment trial almost immediately.

It seems odd to many people – myself included –  to impeach Donald Trump and convict him when he is already gone, and when the Biden administration is trying to launch itself in the face of some staggering problems.

The country is just starting to breathe again, and there must be some very good reason to put us through this again. I think there is, but no one is owning up to it.

Pelosi has bigger fish to fry than impeaching Trump, and so does President Biden, who is eager to kick off his administration and vanquish the virus. Biden was lukewarm at best to the idea of starting out his term in office by competing with another impeachment trial.

I don’t see what Nancy Pelosi has to gain from it either unless you buy the notion – I do – that she doesn’t really care about impeaching Trump, her real goal is to make it impossible for him to seek elective office again.

This, I sense, could be one of those unspoken deals with the devil. She gets a vote to convict Trump from the Senate Republican Leader, and other senators vote along with him. He gets rid of the greatest threat to the party in all of its history.

In so doing they each get something they want.

Trump can’t run for office again and McConnell gets to wrench control of the Republican Party from the man who would destroy it in a second to save his own hide.

It would trigger an ugly and prolonged civil war within the Republican Party, but if McConnell thinks he can win it, he will fight it. There is a lot at stake, for him, the party, the country.

Being convicted of insurrection and banned from seeking office would be the final straw for Trump, and in a way, for his followers. Trump is not a leader who delegates or encourages other people for future leadership roles.

He is the whole show, it’s all about him. If he goes down, it goes down.

In this scenario, he would be over, and even he couldn’t pretend otherwise.

It still seems strangely awkward to impeach a President who is no longer President. There are both civil and criminal options for punishing Trump if he is found guilty of aiding the insurrection or of any other crimes.

Of course, it’s more complicated than that.

There are several reasons for pursuing Trump. Mitch McConnell is the biggest.

To convict Trump of impeachment, 17 Republican Senators will need to join with 50 Democratic senators.

On its face, that was always unlikely. Republicans are reluctant to alienate Trump’s powerful and very loyal base, even though the fever seems to be breaking somewhat and his popularity is waning.

Trump has promised to find and fund primary challengers for any Senator or congressperson who defies him.

That was why people were so surprised when McConnell defended the legitimacy of the Bide election and said on the Senate Floor that then President Trump had provoked the rioters.

That is important, that is what makes what Trump did impeachable.

Trump is hemorrhaging support from everywhere. According to the New York Times, which has been tracking dozens of Proud Boys messages on social media sites like Gab and Telegram.

Yesterday, one Proud Boy leader said “Trump will go down as a total failure. Members of the group have been calling him a “shill” and “extraordinarily weak,” and have urged members and supporters to stop attending rallies and protests held by the Republican Party.

At least some of the people who raided the capitol increasingly see him as wimping out and running away, leaving them to face the consequences for the mayhem he instigated.

He failed to pardon them, as their lawyers asked him to do, and he finally caved in to reality and accepted his loss, and then he left, which he promised not to do. He even left Joe Biden a sweet note, something the Proud Boys are not into.

I would think people paying any attention to Trump would know by now that he is famous for abandoning people who stick out their necks for him.

To many of his followers, that was cowardice and weakness, not the reckless bravery he claimed to represent.

They discover what his biographers have always known; he is a coward, not a warrior. This is the General who orders his soldiers into battle, and as they get picked off one by one,  leaves the battlefield to ride off to his castle.

The reason conviction is a real possibility when it wouldn’t normally be is  McConnell, the cold-blooded master of congressional dysfunction, cloak-room scheming, – manipulation of Senate procedures,  and ruthless power-snatching.

McConnell is a winner, a master politician, and strategist; he seldom fails to get his way. He is the very last person Trump could afford to insult and alienate.

McConnell said publically that he was outraged by Trump’s incitement to riot on January 6 and the abandonment of his most loyal ally, Vice President Mike Pence.

He says he will never speak with Trump again. For the taciturn McConnell, that is outrage. It is treason in Trump World. McConnell joined the long list of death threats courtesy of Donald Trump’s supporters.

McConnell says he is open to impeachment but won’t yet say how he might vote. About 20 senators are saying they aren’t sure how they will vote. That is not a coincidence. They are the votes that could convict Donald Trump.

I would never presume to know what Mitch McConnell is thinking or his true motives; he doesn’t bleed human blood.

But if I had to guess – okay, I choose to guess – I think it is this.

If Donald Trump is found guilty of inciting the rioters to attack the capitol, which no one doubts for a second he did (Nixon was run out of office for far less), the Senate can then legally ban him from ever seeking or holding federal office.

They can do this by a simple majority, which the Democrats now have.

If Trump doesn’t get convicted he can continue to raise tons of money for a future candidacy, push his own slate of candidates in state and local elections,  defeat independent thinkers or critics, interfere with legislation before Congress, and continue to push the party to the extreme right.

If so, very few people believe it will remain a national party capable of fielding electable Senate and congressional candidates and Presidents.

American voters have made it clear they want their Presidents to be in the center, not far right or far left. Trump was an anomaly when he was elected; nobody really knew what he was.

Cleared of wrongdoing once again,  and flirting with running for office, Trump will paralyze the Republican Party, push its next generation of leaders to the side or far out of the mainstream, and turn the GOP into an extremist white nationalist Christian party.

I have trouble thinking this is something McConnell would want to happen.

Remember, donors, are generally vampires, not ideologues. They go with power, they want winners who can help them and return favors. If Trump is convicted, and can’t run again, he is pretty much useless to them.

If he isn’t convinced, the country faces more chaos and conflict. It isn’t good for business.

McConnell is savvy enough to know that white nationalism is the wrong dynamic for the new America, whose different colors were evident at the Biden inauguration.

By 2050, whites will be a minority in America, one reason so many of them are fighting progress and change so intensely.

Trump was greatly diminished by January 6.

His popularity is likely to shrink even more now that he is out of the office, golfing with the rich old retirees and Lindsey Graham, his companion, and political lover,  in Palm Beach.

He will also be without the mighty megaphone and power that is the White House.

Reporters will not follow him up the Mar-A-Largo driveway on the way to his golf courses, shouting questions he won’t answer. He will not be the big story of every day. He can’t reward his pals and punish his enemies.

For McConnell and the Republicans, the stakes could not be higher.

If Trump is convicted and prohibited from seeking public office,  then the “establishment” wing of the Republican Party can break away from him., even blame the Democrats.

They’ll have plenty of time to raise money and prepare to fight off extremist challengers.

So the battle for the soul and very existence of the Republican Party is on, and Mitch McConnell is in a good spot for a long fight. If Trump is convicted, it would be a short fight in most ways.

McConnell just won re-election to a six-year term and is much loved by his caucus. And he knows how to fight dirty.

Trump’s followers will be outraged if Trump is convicted of insurrection, but many traditional Republicans and conservatives, as well as moderates and independent and suburban voters, will be relieved,  free to return to the party and fight for it.

Real conservatives never trusted Trump or liked him.

McConnell can read the news and the polls; he knows America is changing, turning blacker, browner, more feminist,  yellower, he knows suburban women and women, in general, tend not to be far-right extremists.

He also knows Trump faces an array of serious civil and possibly criminal charges, the most serious of which carry 25-year jail sentences. As slick and untouchable as he has seemed, he will have to work hard and spend a lot of money to stay out of jail.

I’m not sure this matters to McConnell, but there is also the question of what is best for the country. You know, the right thing. What Trump did was inexcusable and unforgivable.

McConnell seems to know that Trump almost undid our democracy, and it really seems to bother him.

If it matters at all to him that he do the right thing and protect his own legacy, McConnell will feed Donald Trump to the fish.

Trump has given McConnell a credible cover for abandoning him –  his very open and visible role in the attack on the capital.

There is also this image: Mike Pence holed up in an underground office with his granddaughters while rioters pounding on the door and threatening to hang him while Trump is refusing to answer his calls for help.

That kind of thing tends to weaken party loyalty.

Every day, more and more awful images come out showing the attack and revealing the murderous threats the rioters were said to be making.

In the first impeachment trial, the Republican senators didn’t want to see much evidence or call any witnesses. Many of them, including McConnell,  are saying they are eager to see the evidence here.

Trump has never been less popular than he is now, and once he gets his hands on new social media tools, he will seek to re-invigorate and re-radicalize his base.

He is very good at using media, and there is all kinds of media for him to use.

McConnell knows the adage about kings better than anyone. If you go after the King, you better kill him.

If not now, then never.

McConnell is an institutionalist; keeping the Republican Party in power has been his whole political life.

If he votes to convict Trump, an unknown number of Republican senators will follow suit. They’ll have some time to raise their own money and fend off the primary challenges Trump will try to organize against them if he is still in a position to do so.

Some important Republican donors have pledged to give money to legislators who vote their conscience and are targeted.

Many big Republican donors are eager to break with Trump. Most of them want something back; they are not as dumb and crazy as Mr. Pillow.

McConnell and Trump are now enemies, each committed to defeating the other.

There is no going back. McConnell has committed the unforgivable sin of criticizing Donald Trump in public, and  McConnell and the rest of us all know what Trump tries to do to his enemies.

So it’s now him or Trump.

Trump is not able to get at McConnell easily, but McConnell is in a position to easily cripple Trump. I have a hard time seeing McConnell put up with Trump for four more years, or even longer. That would tear his party apart, and make his work a Hell.

Since McConnell is a professional politician, he will not be especially reluctant to betray a former ally.

I like the odds here. “It’s nothing personal, Sonny – it’s strictly business,” said Michael Corleone, in the Godfather.

Like them or not, the country needs a Republican Party. It is critical to the idea of checks and balances, a two-party system that serves as a curb on power.

McConnell alone can navigate the party back to its more familiar role as protector of billionaires, stacker of right-wing justices,  racists and rapists of poor people, betrayers of Jesus Christ, and obstructors of help for the vulnerable.

After four years of Trump, this suddenly sounds like something we can live with.

We have for years.

I’m on a tear this year. I predicted Bidens victory; I predicted the Georgia senators’ victory, I predicted Trump’s inevitable self-destruction and suicidal judgment, it was clear he would destroy himself.

I’m due for a loss, but I sniff a win. Mistakes are what we learn from, what keeps us humble. This is the fun part for me. If I ever fear being wrong, I’m done.

I think McConnell – he is known in some circles as the velvet shiv – will cut the Hydra’s head off and save his party.

After all, he would then be its unquestioned leader—what a sweet way to cap off a career.