Because of what she said and did, if the House doesn’t go all the way, it will be a political disaster. Either failing to take a vote on articles of impeachment, or failing to get enough votes among her majority to pass any articles, would be seen as a political exoneration for Trump, likely leading to his re-election.
If all that weren’t risky enough, consider another scenario. If House Dems do impeach Trump on grounds that much of the public sees as flimsy and concocted, they could win the battle and lose the war. Indeed, no matter what the House does, there is a next-to-zero chance the GOP controlled Senate would convict the president absent clear and convincing “high crimes and misdemeanors.”
Goodwin: Pelosi’s impeachment flip-flop changes everything.
I believe that the Old School Democrats believe that the New Screeching generation are actually the majority vote for the next elections. Also, they believe they will make gains if they take this dog & Pony show live in CNN.
The American People simply will not tolerate the unseating of a president because the main accusation is the political equivalent of “he gave me the cooties.” The Trump base is more energized than ever and even Republican voters not in the Trump field will rather vote for him than facing a government by Democrats who are just upending all what the USA stands for.
Be ready for a avalanche of false witnesses and “evidence” at the hearings. They will sink that low. It is gonna be nasty and even nastier after the re-election.
If I were President facing this, I’d start declassifying a lot of crap from the previous administration, starting with Fast and Furious. You wanna play dirty? I will play dirtirer: I would use the Truth.
“If I were President facing this, I’d start declassifying a lot of crap from the previous administration, starting with Fast and Furious. You wanna play dirty? I will play dirtirer: I would use the Truth.”
Indeed. How fast can I get the declassification pen out. I wouldn’t start with Fast and Furious, I’d start with the crap that was the Obama administration using the intelligence services and the FBI to spy on an opponent during an election campaign.
I’d just start working back from there. And bypass the media with it; they’ll just cover it up, ignore it, or attempt to explain it away. Post it directly to the internet on the WH web page.
It’s time for some tar and feathers.
^^ This ^^
Show the full progression of Leftist political oppression, step by step.
Start with FBI/CIA/NSA spying on Americans in America. Because alternative views must be monitored and tracked.
From there, work up to weaponizing the IRS to deny tax-exempt status to opposing PACs and non-profits. (Lois Lerner, anyone?) Because alternative views must not only be monitored and tracked, they must not be allowed to be expressed or heard.
Then reveal how HHS required Catholic charities to provide and fund contraceptive and birth control insurance coverage, and encouraged LGBTQQAAPIEIEIO groups to sue Christian business owners into poverty. Because alternative views must not only be stifled, they must be punished.
Finally, get the truth out about Project Gunrunner and Operation Fast & Furious. Show America how the previous administration broke federal law, armed foreign criminals and terrorists, and celebrated when those guns were used to murder innocent civilians and ICE and CBP agents.
And how through all of this, nobody responsible was ever fired or officially disciplined. The worst outcome was that an IRS supervisor was allowed to resign and keep her six-figure pension and benefits.
Obama built a political juggernaut blaming every problem on the Bush administration (not entirely undeservedly, but also nowhere near to the extent they were blamed). Trump has a chance to tear all of that down, salt the ruins, and completely discredit Obama’s (and by extension, the Left’s) whole legacy. And unlike his predecessor, he can do it without shifting blame or lying to the American people.
He’s trying. He authorized AG Barr to release the spy-gate documents, but the deep stare is effectively blocking it.
I think he’s being too nice to the swamp, though. The deep state has no actual authority to block things over the direct orders of the President. If he lets them get away with this, it means he has chosen not to exercise his full power as chief executive. “Authorize” is the wrong action for the example you gave; the correct action would be “order”.
He has acted sufficiently strongly at times, for example when he fired Sally Yates for insubordination. He can, and should, do so more often.
Similarly with declassification. It’s his power to use, and while it’s normally delegated to the “intelligence community”, it doesn’t have to be. The oddest example is the current situation with the Justice department IG report on FBI misconduct around the 2016 election, which is reportedly complete except for classification review by the Justice department and the FBI. I can’t fathom why the agency that’s the subject of an investigation gets to review the investigation report, much less gets to have a say in which parts of it will be secret.
The Trump base is more energized than ever and even Republican voters not in the Trump field will rather vote for him than facing a government by Democrats who are just upending all what the USA stands for.
Not just Republicans. Don’t forget about the droves of Rust Belt Democrats who voted for Trump, and will again due to their “never coming back” jobs coming back, complete with higher wages and fewer stifling regulations.
Trump won because historically-blue states (e.g. Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin) voted for him, and he’s kept his promises to them. Voters there are doing better now than they have in decades. That “inconvenient truth” won’t be forgotten by November 2020.
As an aside, I think this is Trump’s most heinous “crime” in the Left’s eyes: As a Republican he revealed to their constituents that politicians can make things better for them, after a generation of Democrats told them it wasn’t possible — or worse, was possible but (after the election) not a priority. He showed those voters, in no uncertain terms, that the Left doesn’t give two sh!ts about them.
Is that impeachable? Not a chance. But unforgivable? Absolutely.
“Not just Republicans. Don’t forget about the droves of Rust Belt Democrats who voted for Trump, and will again…”
There’s also the fact that the New Hip Democrats seem to have a strong contempt for the old core constituency of Blue Collar Working Men, and are pretty much openly promising to take stuff away from them- guns, meat, cars, and so on.
Another case in point, two days later:
Wall Street Democrats Warn They’ll Sit Out 2020 Presidential Election or Support Trump if Warren is Nominee — Legal Insurrection
So it’s not just blue-collar working-class Democrats who will sit out or support Trump. There are white-collar Dems who will do the same. Democrats from across the economic spectrum are willing to support the GOP candidate.
That’s a clue-bat that I predict the DNC will fail to appropriately respect.
Two thoughts.
We can refer to the current activity as the “Pelosi Putsch” (hat tip to Matthew Bracken).
On Brett Baier’s “Special Report”, WSJ columnist William McGurn pointed out that Pelosi really didn’t do anything. Her use of the word “official” means exactly nothing, it’s just a word she put in a sentence she spoke. So one possibility would be for people who are subpoena’d by various committees to refuse since there is no actual impeachment inquiry. Courts should uphold that; it would force the House to have an actual vote where each member would have to say yes or no to an impeachment inquiry. Pelosi was trying to placate the AOC far left without any actual accountability for her members; she shouldn’t get away with that little trick.
I’ve heard it said, by people I trust, that Constitutionally there’s no such thing as an “impeachment inquiry”. There’s either an impeachment or there’s not.
And if there is, that doesn’t remove the sitting President from office. An impeachment is like an indictment; it’s a finding of possible criminal conduct that allows a trial to proceed, but is NOT a finding of fact OR a determination of guilt. That comes later, in the Senate.
This “impeachment inquiry” language just tells me that Pelosi is (wisely) keeping her escape route open. They can do their inquiry and appear to be “doing something”, without actually doing anything. And if (when) they find no evidence of criminal wrongdoing, she can shrug and remind us that it was just an inquiry … right before she starts shrieking (again) that Trump is a criminal, but then calmly saying impeachment must proceed slowly.
And it must proceed slowly if they want any chance at success. The President is just as protected by the 5th Amendment’s “double jeopardy” clause as anyone else. I for one have said that if they want to rumble, they should bring it and get it over with, but if they fail — if the finding of fact says there was no criminal offense worthy of removing the President — then they cannot legitimately continue that argument.
That they haven’t brought on official impeachment proceedings tells me that they want their ramblings from 2016 to be center-stage in the 2020 election, even though they have nothing. They’re just dragging it out. (Either that, or they’re terrified of succeeding and having to deal with “President Mike Pence”.)
The 5th Amendment rule against double jeopardy has nothing do with impeachment; it applies to criminal cases, which impeachment isn’t. In fact, the Constitution’s mention of impeachment says that (a) conviction under impeachment only gets you removed from office and barred from any other office, and (b) you are still liable to criminal prosecution for that same offense afterwards (Article 1, Section 3).
Since only two impeachments of presidents have occurred in history, it’s hardly a surprise that no president has been impeached twice. And as a practical matter it would be quite unlikely, but as a Constitutional matter is is perfectly valid.
Pelosi is a very good politician. I want all of us to remember what was in the media a week ago. What we were all talking about?
It was about Democrat running for the office of president standing up on national TV and saying “Hell yes, we’re going to take your AR-15”.
And all of the other D’s jumping up and yelling #MeTOO!
That didn’t play well. And every site right of the Vox was talking about the constitutional issues and push back and how it wasn’t really against the Constitution. There was a meme per hour. I particularly like the one where Francis is shown talking about how all the Texans are willing to give up their AR-15s. They keep telling him “Come and Take It”.
Today we’re all talking about “impeachment” and what it means.
We lost.
The dems abandoned their push for confiscation. THEY lost.
(Yeah, they’ll return to it. They always do. But take the win.)
‘ I particularly like the one where Francis is shown talking about how all the Texans are willing to give up their AR-15s. They keep telling him “Come and Take It’
Do you happen to have a link to this meme?
Thanks in advance!
One of our readers known as the Evil Unknown Meme Collector, had it and sent it to share with you
Thanks!
483:55
I have seen speculation that if impeachment actually does hit the Senate, the President’s attorneys will be able to do a lot of diving into (D) records during the discovery phase, along with the ability to subpoena and question practically anyone they want (the Senate [aka/Republicans] will determine what testimony will be allowed – and don’t think that the (D) shenanigans of the past few years will be disallowed).