On Wednesday, the Republican-controlled US Senate voted to acquit President Trump of both counts on which he was impeached – abuse of power and obstruction of Congress. All but one Republican voted to clear President Trump of the charges he was facing, and every Democrat voted to have him removed from office. And while the history books will show that President Trump was acquitted on February 5th, 2020, the moment his acquittal was guaranteed happened long before he was impeached; in fact, long before he ever became president.

In 2012, as the presidential election season was in full swing, Republican nominee Mitt Romney made a comment about ensuring that more women are put into positions of leadership.

“I went to my staff and said ‘How come all of the people for these jobs are men?’ I went to women’s groups… and they brought us whole binders full of women.” Romney had mistakenly missed one word – resumes – as in “they brought whole binders full of women’s resumes.” What happened? The Democrats and media went berserk. They pounced on Romney, calling him an elitist misogynist who is so out of touch that he would say he has binders full of women, which is somehow a misogynistic term. Of course, anyone with an ounce of intellectual honesty knew that the accusations against Romney, who by all accounts is an incredibly decent human being, were total bunk. And yet, the attacks did the job for the Democrats and their friends in the media; Romney lost the 2012 election to Barack Obama.

Right then, I believe, was the turning point. It was then that Republicans across the country had had enough. When Romney was taken to the woodshed over a simple missed word, and accused of being a terrible person, that was when Republicans turned off the Democratic noise machine and began completely ignoring the mainstream media’s agenda. That’s how Donald Trump, a brash, outspoken, and flawed conservative, managed to win the nomination and then the election. By 2016, conservatives had shut out the media, and didn’t care if their candidate wasn’t perfect or was being vilified by Democrats and the media. He promised to uphold conservative values and that’s all they cared about.

This Republican attitude of ignoring the media continues to this day. While they incessantly pounded at President Trump over every minuscule detail, Republicans circled the wagons, refusing to let the Democrats in government and media to take down yet another on of their own over silly reasons. When Trump got impeached, Republicans refused to even call witnesses to testify in the Senate trial, something which would have been unfathomable a few years ago. But that is the environment we live in now; Republicans won’t give fodder to the media to destroy another Republican like they did with Romney in 2012. Republicans know that, just like with Romney, regardless of who the Republican president was, Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio, or Tim Scott, the Democrats and the media will make a huge fuss over something – anything – that they did or said. So why should they bother listening to them about things Trump did? And so they didn’t.

The Democrats are wringing their hands on TV about the supposed destruction of democracy due to Republicans failure to convict and remove President Trump from office. But if they had any insight into their actions, they would recognize that it was they who guaranteed, back in 2012, that Trump would never be removed from office by his fellow Republicans.

Only one Republican voted along with the Democrats to convict President Trump. His name? Mitt Romney.