I’ll confess: Last night, when I was first told that Speaker Nancy Pelosi was toying with the idea of not delivering the two articles of impeachment voted by the House against President Trump, I assumed it was a joke.
For these last weeks, the Democrat-dominated chamber has been in a mad rush to impeach the president. Democrats even tacked on article two — “obstruction of Congress” — because, they told us, time could not be wasted engaging in the usual negotiation and litigation over legislative demands for executive branch information. Trump is a clear and present threat to “continue” undermining our elections, we were admonished. That’s why he needs to be impeached right now. That’s why the political class cannot responsibly leave his fate up to the sovereign, the People, who will vote in November.
But now that the deed is done, it’s . . . hey, not so fast.
Pelosi and Democratic leadership have convinced themselves there may be advantage in delaying the formal, ministerial delivery of the impeachment articles — as if Mitch McConnell were in as much a hurry to receive them as Democrats were to conjure them up. The thought is that this latest strategic petulance might pressure Senator McConnell into promising a full-blown trial, including summoning as witnesses top aides of the president whom the House didn’t bother to summon because tangling over privilege issues would have slowed up the works.
So it’s not a joke, but I still have to laugh. When I was a prosecutor negotiating plea deals, I always found the most pathetic defense lawyers were the ones who acted like they were playing with the House money when, in stark reality, it was they who needed something from me. Now here’s Pelosi trying to play hard to get with McConnell who, I imagine, couldn’t care less how long Democrats want to dither.
What we’ve just seen is the most partisan impeachment in American history, every step of it politically calculated. Obviously, if Democrats perceived advantage in stretching the process out, it would still be going on. There would be more witnesses; more 300- or 600-page committee reports to try to add heft and gravity to vague allegations of inchoate misconduct; more speeches about Trump as a threat to democracy and life as we know it; etc., etc.
To the contrary, Pelosi & Co. want this train wreck in the rearview mirror ASAP. The public is indifferent and polls are edging in Trump’s favor. On our local news this morning, the third impeachment of a president of the United States in American history couldn’t crack the top stories — it came in behind cold weather (in December) and the rescue of an elderly man in a gym by a couple of off-duty cops.
No one, of course, has to explain this to McConnell. In public, at least, he’s not a laughing-his-head-off kinda guy, but if he were, he would be.
It’s hard to believe the Speaker’s latest stunt will go on for very long. In the Senate this morning, the Democrats’ minority leader, Senator Chuck Schumer, renewed his demands about trial procedures, discovery, and witness testimony. There was no discernible hint of doubt that the House would soon deliver its impeachment articles, such as they are.
But since we’ll be playing trivial pursuit for a more few hours (days?), we might as well ask: As long as the House withholds the impeachment articles from the Senate, has Trump been impeached?
I kept trying to figure how why McConnell would be desperate to get the articles of impeachment from Pelosi. My first reaction was that there HAS to be some leverage there, but as it turns out, she’s just drunk.
Unless all the Democrats missed the results of 2018 that they didn’t like (they have a bit of a problem in that regard, it appears) they didn’t have any excuse to be unaware that, though their politically railroaded impeachment circus had an assured outcome in the Democrat’s rarified bizarre-world of the House, it was eventually going to face NON-Democrat control in the Senate. So, like the Clinton impeachment, this one was on the express lane to nowhere. Was the intent to actually remove the threat of Trump and protect the country?
Nope. The intent all along has been to damage Trump’s candidacy. Sound familiar? Yeah… that’s what Trump was IMPEACHED (almost) for. Now Pelosi, having achieved the purely DNC political goal she set out to achieve, could see it all wrecked if McConnell seeks truth and justice, the very things Pelosi, Schiff, Nadler and Schumer despise. So, now she keeps her worthless result of the House not doing anything but trying to destroy Trump’s campaign for two months from being exposed for what it is; something often found on the sidewalks of San Francisco.
impeach
[imˈpēCH]
VERB
call into question the integrity or validity of (a practice).
“there is no basis to Searle’s motion to impeach the verdict”
synonyms:
challenge · question · call into question · cast doubt on · raise doubts about
It is in the congressional record
Just like the 2 previous Presidents yes Trump has been impeached as per the definition.
Both previous Presidents were indeed impeached. Both not removed from office by the Senate. No one would remember the first attempt by political hacks if it were not for history recording the impeachment in the congressional record.
No.
Democrats have vowed to keep impeaching. Over and over and over. First, this admits that their charges are so weak as to assure that Trump will not be removed from office and this admits they have no confidence in ever winning an election against him, even with all their characteristic fraud. Does anyone really need any further proof that these hateful, anti-American, anti-Constitutional radicals should be purged out of our government?
@Deplorable Me:
And permanently at that. The Federalists and Whigs brought much to the table before they vanished. This POS party brings nothing. They need to have as much representation as their kissing cousins, the CPUSA.
@another vet: The results of the 2020 congressional elections will indicate the fate of the liberals running the Democrat Party. The voters will not tolerate continuous impeachment hearings at the cost of getting the peoples’ agenda done. The results of the Barr investigations will also move the liberals further left and down the slide to irrelevance. It takes decades for a new party to become relevant and longer for an older party to regain the trust of the voters. The liberal behavior and the investigations that reveal their true actions will drive the downfall. Liberals are committing suicide! They fail to relate to what is happening in the rest of the World who have been there and done that. Just watch greggies posts to see their ignorance. He is just one of the canaries in the mine squaking until they die.
@Randy: Don’t forget how effectively the Democrats shed their racist origins and DNA AND blamed it all on Republicans. Don’t underestimate their powers of hypocrisy.
Merry Christmas, everyone!
the idiots, all of them can be removed from office. recall that in 2014, this country was a few hours away from a military take over.