I&I Editorial
Why would House Democrats put forward articles of impeachment that are laughably weak and have no chance of removing President Donald Trump from office? Most of the speculation has been that the impeachment will nevertheless hurt Trump’s reelection chances. There’s another possibility that’s even more insidious.
Democratic Party leaders can’t possibly be unaware of the fact that their impeachment case has no merit. Despite the endless talk of bribery, extortion, campaign finance violations and other supposed crimes Trump has committed, not one of the articles of impeachment accuses Trump of breaking any of those laws, or any federal law for that matter.
Instead, they accuse Trump of an “abuse of power” and of “obstruction of Congress.” As Sen. Ted Cruz explained this week at a Heritage Foundation event, as weak as the first article is, “the second article is orders of magnitude weaker.”
“They’ve simply said that the mere fact that you assert a privilege is itself impeachable, without their bothering to issue a subpoena or litigating anything.
“If that is impeachable conduct,” Cruz went on, “all 45 presidents we have had in the United States have committed impeachable offenses.”
Mind you, this is in sharp contrast to the articles of impeachment against President Bill Clinton, which charged him with committing two felonies – perjury before a federal grand jury and obstruction of justice.
Note, too, that the Republican-controlled House rejected an article of impeachment accusing Clinton of “abuse of power.” Also, note that the two articles that did pass the House attracted five Democratic votes, which means that Clinton’s impeachment had infinitely more bipartisan support than the current circus.
Even so, the Republican-controlled Senate deemed the charges – for which there was plenty of direct evidence – as not worthy of removal from office.
To the extent that anything is certain in life, it is that Trump will not be removed from office based on the incredibly flimsy articles of impeachment the House approved Wednesday.
Democrats also can’t be unaware that impeaching Trump on these grounds won’t do anything to help their chances in 2020. If anything, it might make it harder for them to win the election, since it bolsters Trump’s case that the Deep State will do anything to kick him out of office, despite his successes.
The latest Gallup poll finds that Trump’s approval rating has climbed 6 points since the House opened the impeachment inquiry.
And as we noted in this space recently, support for removing Trump from office has collapsed.
At the end of October, almost half the public said it wanted Trump removed, according to the Real Clear Politics average of polls. Now that number is 47%. And for the first time since the media started regularly polling on this, more say Trump shouldn’t be removed from office – 48% – than say he should.
Worse for Democrats, once the impeachment trial is over, they will have nothing left to talk about. The economy is doing well. The middle class is thriving. Trump is signing trade deals. The border is more secure than it was, even without the wall. The courts are filling up with conservative judges. Trump will be able to honestly say that he’s delivered on more campaign promises in his first term than many, if not most, of his predecessors.
So why bother with impeachment?
The clue is in how Democrats are framing the debate today. They are no longer claiming bribery or quid pro quo, since they had no evidence to prove such charges. They are simply charging that Trump invited a foreign government to interfere in the U.S. election.
Which is exactly what Democrats were claiming before the 2016 election. In early September 2016, when we were still writing for the now-defunct Investor’s Business Daily editorial page, we noticed something Hillary Clinton had told reporters on her campaign plane.
The headline on that editorial was, “Hillary Clinton Pre-Blames Russians For A November Loss.” Here’s what we wrote:
When a reporter aboard Clinton’s campaign plane asked if Putin is using cyberwarfare to help elect Trump, Clinton said … “I often quote a great saying that I learned from living in Arkansas for many years: ‘If you find a turtle on a fence post, it didn’t get there by itself.'” She then added, in case anyone didn’t get her point, that “I think it’s quite intriguing that this activity has happened around the time Trump became the nominee.”
She said that Trump “has generally parroted what is a Putin/Kremlin line.”
Clinton’s VP, Tim Kaine, basically accused Trump of ordering the hack on the DNC. “He has openly encouraged Russia to engage in cyberhacking to try to find more emails or materials, and we know that this cyberattack on the DNC was likely done by Russia,” Kaine said on Sunday. “A president was impeached and had to resign over an attack on the DNC during a presidential election in 1972.”
The Democratic Party has joined in. Sen. Harry Reid last week asked the FBI to investigate whether Russia was trying to “falsify election results” and hand the election to Trump.
We all know what happened next. As soon as Trump won the election, Democrats accused him of colluding with Russia to steal it from Clinton, and then hounded the White House about it for more than two years.
Well, now they are accusing Trump of trying to enlist Ukraine to do the same in 2020.
You can bet that if Trump does win in 2020, Democrats – and the press – will use this argument, or some other claims of foreign interference, to contend that Trump stole his reelection, too. The long-term implications of such a move are terrible to consider. Democrats don’t seem to care.
– Written by the Issues & Insights Editorial Board
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Now is the time for We The People to strike back; strike back to save our country; our Constitution; our values; our way of life. What the Democrats have done is truly despicable; a craven, cynical, corrosive act of petulant rage that eats at the very soul of America. They must pay. Bigly…
Since we Deplorables aren’t violent ANTIFA-like stooges, ours must be a more nuanced, intelligent response: We usher in an extinction-level event next November. I’m talking making the Democrats lose 100+ seats in the house and 8-10 of the 1 Senate seats they’re defending. If we get organized and set our petty little differences aside for an election season, we can utterly destroy this evil cabal of Leftists, ‘Progressives’ and barking-mad lunatics. Even so-called ‘moderate’ Democrats must feel the outrage – and suffer the consequences.
Here’s what we do: 1. President Trump and a unified GOP need to begin spending that war chest in a massive ad and campaign outreach program targeting every single Congressional Democrat for their impeachment tantrum. Begin with those in so-called Trump districts who won in 2018, then go after the rest, especially Nancy Pelosi, Adam Schiff, Jerrold Nadler, Maxine Waters, ‘the Squad’, Eric Swalwell ( because he’s a moron), Hank Johnson (“Guam may capsize”) and Sheila Jackson-Lee (who stupidly asked NASA scientists where the astronauts were in the Mars Rover pictures). We need to saturate the San Francisco, Los Angeles, Seattle, Albuquerque, Austin, St. Lois, Madison, New Orleans, Atlanta, Chicago, Des Moins, Madison, Minneapolis/St. Paul, Detroit, Cleveland, Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, D.C., New York City and Boston markets with ads highlighting the evil exposed in the Horowitz Report, debunking the “no bias found’ lie and otherwise appeal to the basic sense of fairness Americans hold (except for hard leftists – they’re unreachable.) This may convince some Dems to stay home, moderates and independents to vote Trump and also to drive voter turnout. Yes this will be expensive, but the GOP is outpacing the Democrats in fundraising 5:1. Plus can you imagine the torrent of cash if Trump began asking for small donations at every one of his rallies?
And this brings up part 2: We The People must get organized. Talk to 10 friends or relatives and convince them to vote Trump. Talk about basic fairness and what true abuse of power looks like. Summarize the socking Horowitz Report; debunk all the ‘Mexicans are rapists’ and ‘Charlottsville’ lies (Prager U videos do a great job). Next we need to each send in a $10 (minimum) donation to the Trump campaign, plus another $10 to State GOP coffers. That’s at least $1.2 billion!
If you’re really committed (I am) try going to some local GOP meetings to put the fear of God into them. Contact your Representatives and Senators congratulating them for holding firm against such evil or, if like me you’re represented by a anti-American Democrat, write their office weekly reminding them (politely) that they have broken their trust with the American people and put party above country; politics above basic decency and revenge above all else.
It’s like President Trump tweeted after the impeachment vote:
“They’re not after me; they’re after YOU. I’m just in the way.”
Screw these people! They obviously hate us and don’t care what damage they do to our nation. Make them pay at the polls.
It’s pointless to go after left wing Dems in radical left wing urban districts. Their disciples will vote for them come hell or high water. What you do is go after the shaky Democrat seats. The ones Trump won and Democrats won in 2018 are more than enough to take back the House.
In much the same way that recognizing Ukrainian efforts to meddle in 2016 doesn’t disregard Russian efforts to do the same, it’s possible to target both shaky and safe Democratic seats, and there’s merit in doing so.
The Democratic voting blocs aren’t as monolithic as you might believe, and these people live in an echo chamber. There’s a lot of disinformation out there, and a lot of decent and principled people who vote Democratic because they haven’t got possession of the facts. And in places like Silicon Valley, there are quiet Republicans who share the sentiment you expressed here and keep their heads down.
Democrats, in case you hadn’t noticed, are targeting former Republican strongholds. If Virginia can flip red to blue over the space of a few elections, there’s no reason why Colorado can’t go the other way. We have to look at the blue areas of the map as long-term reclamation projects, and at the very least we have to stop ceding the frames of debate to the Left. We have to call them on their intellectual incoherence, their moral bankruptcy, their political redundancy, and their manifest hypocrisy. And we have to avoid the error that they have made which led them into these failures: we have to avoid tarring the followers with the brush that is rightly applied to the mendacious, self-dealing, cynical, amoral, power-hungry, treacherous Quislings that speak for them.
I have good friends who vote Democratic. We hold political conversations. I respect their viewpoints, but I also educate them. I’m not trying to convert, I’m trying to coexist. I think it’s a lot easier to make a Democratic voter more open to hearing sensible arguments from the center than to try to drag them kicking and screaming over to the right; and I think it’s a lot easier to elect Republicans to seats where the Democratic voters are more open to hearing them. Even if we can’t do that, if we can get enough voters in enough districts to be open enough to a more centrist viewpoint that the Democratic representative is forced to tack right to maintain their support, the net effect is a rightward shift. Yes, it’s better in some respects for Republicans to have more numbers; in others, it’s a surer firewall in the long-term for a majority of politicians of all parties to be on the same page. I’d rather pass center-right legislation with healthy Democratic support than build a critical mass of Republicans to ram through a right-wing agenda that then causes a corrective leftward swing among the electorate.
The blow has already fallen unnoticed. No democrat can win a national election with less than 85% of the black vote. That percentage can be calculated two way and both of them are fatal. One is the percentage of eligible voter who actually vote. The other is the percentage of those who do vote.
So, they will never duplicate the 17 million black voters that sunk Mitt Romney. Those days are gone. Gay mayor Pete and The Cherokee Princess poll in the single digits in the cities. They are not coming out for some doddering old white guys either.
Here comes the 2020 Battle of Midway wherein a turning point is reached that predicts the inevitable result. Trump is polling over 30% of the black vote in three national polls. That’s it. It is over.
Everything else is sound and fury signifying nothing. The dems carriers lie on the bottom. If outlets told what they know, viewership would plummet. The notion that there is still a race is simply a marketing device, nothing more, they know it, they just don’t want you to know. It’s over.
This is exactly right and is being missed by most pundits, except possibly Ben Shapiro. The Dems know that Trump will not be thrown out of office, and will probably win in 2020. Both Pelosi and Nadler last weekend alluded to the fact that they must impeach in order to keep him from stealing another election. This rhetoric is extremely dangerous to our republic. The demonstrations that we saw when Trump was first elected will pale in comparison to the possible riots that we may see in 2020, and the Democrats may not condemn it, and could perhaps encourage it. All this is being enabled by a completely corrupt and compliant mainstream press. Our fragile republic relies on a properly informed voting public, and without a responsible fourth estate the American voter is being mostly propagandized. Our current polarization is far different from the sixties and early seventies, when the protests (and bombings, remember?) were caused by a very small subset of hardcore (and mostly young) radicals reacting against an “establishment” made up of both political parties. Now, however, it is the leaders of one of our two major political parties who seem to be setting the stage for what could be massive civil disobedience if Trump is reelected. I certainly hope these fears do not come to pass, but at this point it seems as if the Democrats have no problem lighting the match. After all, didn’t Pelosi just say that Trump’s reelection would be “the end of civilization as we know it”?
It’s frustrating to see Democrats flout such overt corruption for so long and then see a headline like this one…which comes about 2 years late. This is why we can’t put this nonsense to bed. We’re still playing catch-up! Tomorrow’s I&I headline: Allies win WWII!
I keep wondering why Russia? They are a third world wreck of a country on the other side of the globe.
This “editorial” is nothing more than a high-school level rendition of statements from other sources. FAIL.
Pelosi cant find any members who want their names attached to this “corruption of justice” as House managers. I volunteer Maxine Waters and the bartender from New York.
The purpose of Russian interference wasn’t to pick a winner, it was to weaken the political structure of the USA. They succeeded beyond their wildest dreams thanks to the progressive fascists (Dems) and their using Russian interference as an excuse for losing and to attack President Trump.
2020 election, yes. Second Term? They don’t have that much foresight.
Witness Harry Reid and why Dems are losing their keisters in judges.
Irony? Dems abuse the power of their offices in order to sabotage the 2020 election by accusing Trump of doing the same.
Actually, the Dems are after the Senate.
This is like what happened in 2018, the GOP left the House races to their own and concentrated on retaining the Senate and growing the majority there. And they were moderately successful at doing this, adding a few new seats in a cycle that they should have lost a few.
And what for? Judges.
Trump has seated 2 Supreme Court Justices that are Constitutionalist!! And will likely seat a third one soon. A fundamental shift in the future of the country. But wait it gets better…
And then there are the other Courts that are getting a remarkable number of seats filled with Constitutionalist judges, so much so that the 9th Circuit is no longer the “social justice” wing of the Judicial branch, for example!
Given the Dems know they can’t beat Trump, they are making a play to take the Senate back, even risking losing the House to accomplish that! That’s where the next 50 to 100 years of the country’s future is currently being shaped right now, and by Trump and the GOP.
The Dems had expected to do a lot more damage to Trump than they were able to, they fully expected to be able to spin the call to say whatever they wanted (who would of thought it would get released??), but always knew they could never reach the threshold for removal in the Senate (though the damage of a few GOP defections would be the best they could hope for).
Given the amount of damage they’ve done to this country by packing the courts with “social justice” judges in the past, they know they are totally screwed for decades if they don’t halt that side of Trump’s agenda. Activist judges are the ONLY way they’ll be able to implement their unpopular agenda, and Trump is ripping that up at a terrifying rate (terrifying to the Dems at least).
That would be worth risking the House for, since by itself the House is powerless to effect any real change. But in the Senate, they would be able to stop the Trump agenda cold and possibly start undoing the good work the current Senate has been engaged in. I’m sure that going into this they thought they also had a good chance of keeping the House as well, though by forcing red district Dems to vote to impeach Trump they have to know by now it’s likely they’ll loose the House as well as the Presidency. It’d be worth it though.
So how, you may ask, does impeachment get them the Senate?
You’re already seeing that strategy in action with Schumer and Pelosi painting the process in the Senate as unfair and lacking due process, and being partisan in favor of Trump. Remember, they have the media on their side and can then pummel the large number of GOP Senate candidates this election cycle with this rhetoric day and night for the next 10 months!
All they need to do is peel away a handful of seats to succeed. And like the GOP with 2018, if they concentrate on the Senate in 2020 they stand a good chance of succeeding!!
And that would be a TRUE disaster…
Wrong, the impeachment scam was nothing but a smokescreen that the Dems KNEW wasn’t going to happen. But, it’s distracted everyone from what’s really going on, like the $1.4Trillion Defense Spending Bill, that’s loaded with all the spending that the Dems have been salivating over, like more Obamacare, Gun Control, Tax breaks for their buddies, and worse. Why submit a 2000+ page bill two days before a vote, coincidently coinciding with wrap up of the Impeachment hearings, unless there’s stuff in there they didn’t want the Republicans, or the American people, seeing before they voted on it?