Posted on 01/17/2020 10:01:08 AM PST by billorites
As far as can be determined, the question of whether the Senate should conduct a trial or dismiss the spurious articles of impeachment as unworthy of trial by vote of the majority, is being addressed as a matter of President Trump’s political convenience.
Senator Ted Cruz (R-Texas) is doubtless sincere and may be accurate in saying that the acquittal that is almost certain to result from a trial will clear the president more convincingly than the Republican majority determining at the outset that the charges are frivolous and vexatious harassment and simply should be rejected.
It is clear from the utterances of the authors of the malicious idiocy that has got impeachment to the Senate, Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) and Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerry Nadler (D-N.J.), that the Democratic line will be they caught the president in wrongful acts but the trained Republican seals in the Senate voted with their partisan prejudices rather than their judicious and independent judgment.
Under the circumstances, then, it is better to go ahead with a trial. If the Senate majority’s wish is for witnesses, the president can invoke executive privilege in some cases, but the confection of the false whistleblowing and its apparent guidance by Schiff and his staff should also be exposed.
Since the legal case is nonsense and the outcome foreordained, it is only a public relations battle now. The farther the administration is seen to enable an airing of the facts, the better and more electorally valuable will be the result. The Democrats created this trap for themselves; they should be allowed to take the consequences when that trap snaps closed on them.
It is unlikely the president will fail to gain some political ground. This is the Democrats’ nuclear option—the ultimate weapon—and it has been bandied about as a threat against Trump even before he won the presidency, as we learned from that pillar of disinterested jurisprudential sophistication, Rep. Al Green (D-Texas).
For Trump-haters, there is nothing he is not guilty of; for his supporters, the entire subject is egregious and defamatory piffle. The opposition to impeachment has drifted gradually toward the president’s side, so the wall-to-wall Democratic bias of almost all the national media has failed to hold back the tide of perception that these charges are legal and constitutional nonsense.
For any reader who has been in a submarine or outer space or Antarctica for the last six months, the charges are abuse of office and contempt of Congress. The first is not a ground for impeachment unless specified as treason, bribery, or another high crime or equivalent misdemeanor—and none such is alleged. As to the second charge, the only thing the president is actually guilty of is contempt of Schiff, Nadler, and Pelosi for running a rigged partisan mudslinging operation where the president received none of the protections accorded to defendants by the Bill of Rights; failure to be contemptuous of it would itself be contemptible.
The president was only asking for the facts about the Bidens’ conduct in Ukraine, not for an indictment of the Bidens. Any application of pressure is denied by the Ukrainian president, and in any case, the allegedly withheld assistance to Ukraine was delivered and the investigation requested did not occur. If they weren’t so obnoxiously sanctimonious, Nadler and Schiff would be eligible for theatrical awards for deadpan comedy in presenting such bunk as grave adjudication.
Nothing particularly controversial happened at all, despite the unctuous head-wagging of comparatively moderate opponents of the president, so it is almost impossible for it to do any appreciable harm to him politically: the Democrats will self-disarm, well before U.S. Attorney John Durham’s investigation almost certainly produces a deadly serious damnation, probably accompanied by some well-founded indictments, of the Obama intelligence and justice operations.
The much more important question is whether this is the time to debunk the practice of obviously unjustified recourse to the drastic remedy of presidential impeachment and to deter future reflexive partisan recourse to the attempted criminalization of policy differences.
Alexander Hamilton in Federalist 65 warned of the routinization of presidential impeachment. The danger, partly, is that impeachment could become a regular delaying and tainting tactic by the party out of the White House if it has the majority in the House of Representatives (as has been the case in 36 of the last 52 years in which three of the country’s four impeachment crises occurred, plus the Iran-Contra approach during Ronald Reagan’s administration). This is certainly not what the principal authors of the Constitution favored, and there is no reason to believe that it is what the public wishes.
But unusually strong feelings about the incumbent president are hard to separate from the abstract question of whether the public still wishes to retain presidential impeachment solely for extreme cases of presidential misconduct. This has never occurred and the elegiacal recollections of the Nixon and Clinton impeachments are misplaced. Neither they nor Andrew Johnson nor Donald Trump should ever have been threatened with impeachment, though Nixon might have merited a censure vote.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) is on safe ground following the Clinton precedent about determining whether to call witnesses after the arguments. No witnesses will change the outcome. The prosecution, feeble though it is, has more at risk with witnesses than does the president. The cant and emotionalism that enshrouds this final doomed effort to undo the 2016 election probably require a full trial. The public relations battle must be fought to the end. Then, when it is no longer timely or urgent, the Supreme Court should be asked to clarify whether the Constitution’s enumeration of justifications for impeachment is exhaustive, or only illustrative.
The country will be curious to know whether it must expect this kind of nonsense to be a recurrent theme in its politics, a frequent dilatory and muck-raking procedure. Short of being warned off by the Supreme Court, only a revulsion in public opinion will apparently disabuse nasty and dishonest legislators like Nadler and Schiff from such irresponsible abuse of their positions as is now reaching its tawdry climax.
Not watching the poop show.
Anything more than immediate dismissal is a violation of their oaths to the Constitution.
If impeachment is just a public relations stunt, the Democrats are taking on the wrong guy. President Trump lives for this stuff.
Throughout the course of this five year farce pursuing Trump the Democrats have been acting out of blind, uncontrolled anger.
That has granted a tremendous advantage to the President.
I’d rather a quick dismissal.
I don’t trust most of the GOP Senators.
You gotta wonder how many times Dems and their Media pals must have secretly said in frustration, “Why the hell isn’t Trump folding under our presuure by now? Any other Republican would’ve surrendered long ago!!”
That’s their problem, they got used to generations of Republican get-along wimps ... so when they finally confront a real fighter, they’re shocked to find their usual intimidation isn’t working
Even more to their annoyance, Trump’s resolve has rubbed-off on other Republicans, like Mitch McConnell and the House Republicans ... no wonder the Dems are ticked off
Put the prosecution on trial. Expose who is pulling the strings and why. Document the sedition.
Any of the 51 repubs that don’t vote this charade over and out immoderately needs to burn in hell or get run over by a vehicle the afternoon after they vote with the evil deep state dems!
Clear enough you ba*tards!
I mean IMMEDIATELY! SORRY!
The audience that matters for the Senate Proceedings is American History
Accordingly, Senator McConnell will act and produce a result that will satisfactorily provide a precedent and comply with the constitutional responsibility of the Senate. Once the house has impeached, the Senate must consider the matter in formal detail. Although the voice is not very loud, history demands it.
I think this is especially true in light of the in arguable fact that the Democrats are going forward with impeachment solely to historically discredit forever President Donald J Trump who had the temerity to defeat their queen, Hillary Clinton. That fact is made prominent in the articles of impeachment.
What is happening at present is the creation of a historical damning of President Trump. The Democrats all know and understand their cause is lost in the present. The Democrats have therefore chosen to vindictively continue to destroy the president in the future.
The democrats know and understand that the Trump DOJ is going to destroy them. They are getting in their historical licks
I am an optimist by nature.
I think President Trump will get a second term. I think the Republicans will control the House. I think the Republicans will increase their power in the Senate. I think Trump will put at least 2 more people on the Supreme Court.
I think Nancy Pelosi is handing the entire government over to Donald Trump. I think we are in a Golden Age and it will continue and people will thank God for it and will know that the Democrats tried every dirty trick in the book to sabotage this great time.
For the sake of the Republic and to prevent nonstop impeachments in the future, the Senate needs to immediately dismiss. The dismissal should also come with a statement laying the groundwork for which they would even deem to consider an impeachment to merit conducting a trial. An impeachment inquiry must meet the standards of due process where rules of civil procedure are followed and the President, as the accused, has the right to be represented, cross-exam and present witnesses. Any articles of impeachment must state actual crimes and be accompanied by evidence that establishes the elements of the alleged crimes and would otherwise be admissible under rules of evidence. Any impeachment process begun in the House that does not meet these basic standards should be summarily dismissed.
2. The Dems and their media will then carry this through the election, claiming Trump should have been removed from office but for the intransigence of the Repubs. The media will always carry the water of their Dem masters...
The seven dwarves from the House need to be continually chased around the circus ring, ridiculed, and humiliated, and for as long as possible, until they and their bogus witch hunt has both sickened and enlightened most of the American people. Those are merely live in America but are in favor of the single party state can't be swayed, and after their defeat in November, need never be listened to again. Thanks billorites.
BUMP!
For the sake of the Republic and to prevent nonstop impeachments in the future, the Senate needs to immediately dismiss....
I agree, but a future senate can do what it wants with 51 votes.
I like Rudy’s idea of having the SCOTUS rule the impeachment unconstitutional since no treason, bribery, or high crimes, etc are in the articles. That is the only way to prevent frivolous impeachments in the future.
Hoosier, while I think you have the best idea, I unfortunately agree with Lurkin on how likely the Republican Senate is to actually carry out this plan.
While it would be epic to have Biden & Co’s corruption put on display during a Senate trial, I fear that there would be a clique of 3-5 Senators that would side with the Dems to prevent the witnesses that would expose this corruption.
““Why the hell isn’t Trump folding under our presuure by now? “
LOL
makes me think of Hillary “why aren’t I 50 points ahead!”
SCOTUS would never touch it with a 10 ft pole.
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