I don’t think The Hill has this quite right:

As the evidence mounts of a quid pro quo in President Trump‘s dealings with Ukraine, the president’s allies in Congress are increasingly hopeful they’ll find exoneration in a singular figure: the government whistleblower they’re fighting to expose.

The clash over the whistleblower’s identity — and that person’s right to anonymity — has emerged as a frontline battle in the partisan war over the Trump impeachment inquiry.

Republicans on Capitol Hill contend that knowing the whistleblower’s identity is vital to the process, granting Trump the right to face his accuser — and learn of any political biases the figure might have. They are effectively waging a whisper campaign about the identity of the anonymous figure who filed the complaint triggering the inquiry launched just six weeks ago.

I don’t think you can call it a “whisper campaign” when outlets like RealClearPolitics are openly reporting the name of the person they believe to be the original whistleblower. I don’t know if they’ve identified the correct person or not. If they’re wrong, they’re endangering a CIA analyst who isn’t even involved. If they’re correct, they’re endangering a CIA analyst who followed all the correct whistleblower procedures and is supposed to be protected from exposure. Neither scenario is remotely acceptable.

This reminds me a bit of how public relations flacks go about protecting men accused of sexual misconduct. They seek to discredit the accuser by finding signs that they’re promiscuous or somehow unreliable rather than directly defending the accusations. The problem in this case is that the “sexual assault” took place in front of many witnesses who have corroborated the initial whistleblower’s allegations. In this case, the “rapist” has released hard evidence that they committed the crime but has tried to tell us that the rape was “perfect.” In this case, the whistleblower isn’t even the victim. The victim is Ukraine and the rule of law.

In any case, it’s just not accurate to characterize the whistleblower as the accuser because they’re not the injured party. The GOP is trying to turn them into the victim by ruining their life and exposing them to danger. This is more like saying an secondhand witness to rape should not be believed because they’re biased against rape. That’s not a defense, and it has no merit. That we’ve already heard from firsthand witnesses, including the president himself, just makes this more obvious.

The Senate Republicans are considering a different approach. They’re thinking of going for the “rape is not a crime” defense.

A growing number of Senate Republicans are ready to acknowledge that President Trump used U.S. military aid as leverage to force Ukraine to investigate former vice president Joe Biden and his family as the president repeatedly denies a quid pro quo.

In this shift in strategy to defend Trump, these Republicans are insisting that the president’s action was not illegal and does not rise to the level of an impeachable offense as the Democratic-led House moves forward with the open phase of its probe.

But the shift among Senate Republicans could complicate the message coming from Trump as he furiously fights the claim that he had withheld U.S. aid from Ukraine to pressure it to dig up dirt on a political rival, even as an increasing number of Republicans wonder how long they can continue to argue that no quid pro quo was at play in the matter.

I said from the beginning that this was the only available defense, although I didn’t think they could really argue that the rape was legal. I thought they’d stick to acknowledging it was illegal but saying that impeachment was too stern of a punishment.

This is your modern Republican Party, ladies and gentlemen. It’s worse than my worst projections, and my projections have been unhinged and alarmist for fifteen straight years.