Posted on 11/14/2018 9:58:10 AM PST by Kaslin
If Democrats are trying to reassure anyone that they won't impeach President Trump, they're aren't doing a very good job of it.
Just days after her party won control of the House, Rep. Nancy Pelosi made clear that Democrats might impeach the president even if Trump-Russia special counsel Robert Mueller does not find evidence to warrant charges against him.
"Recognize one point," Pelosi told the Atlantic. "What (Trump-Russia special counsel Robert) Mueller might not think is indictable could be impeachable."
"We're waiting to see what the special counsel finds," Rep. Jerrold Nadler, who will run the House Judiciary Committee, told CNN. "And we will then have to make judgments. I certainly hope that we will not find the necessity for an impeachment. But you can't rule that out."
Before Pelosi and her fellow Democrats turn down the road to impeachment, they might do well to listen to the last speaker of the House who tried to remove a president. Newt Gingrich famously led the Republican impeachment of Bill Clinton in 1998 and 1999. Today, he has regrets.
In a recent interview at the Washington Examiner's Sea Island Political Summit, I asked Gingrich about Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell's recent statement that the Republican campaign against Bill Clinton backfired on the GOP. "The business of presidential harassment, which we were deeply engaged in in the late 1990s, improved the president's approval rating, and tanked ours," McConnell said.
I think McConnell is largely right," Gingrich told me. "I think we mishandled the (Clinton) investigation ... and I think that we should have been calmer and slower and allowed the country to talk to itself before we reached judgment."
Gingrich pointed to another House leader, Democrat Tip O'Neill, who handled House action against Richard Nixon during Watergate. "O'Neill was better than I was at managing that process," Gingrich said.
Gingrich's words -- and McConnell's, too -- are extraordinary admissions of mistakes. Together, they serve as a warning to Democrats to be cautious when it comes to impeaching Trump.
On the other hand, some might see Gingrich and McConnell as simply trying to scare Democrats away from pursuing a Republican president. In any event, though, they point out that impeachment can put a party in a very dangerous position.
Of course the Trump and Clinton cases are different. Yes, Trump's job approval is nearly the same as Clinton's was at this point in his presidency, according to Gallup. But Trump has been the target of relentlessly negative media commentary, while during the Clinton scandals much less of the commentary targeted the president, and a good portion instead targeted Republican investigators.
Today, there is one group that really wants impeachment, and that is Democratic voters. According to an NBC News exit poll, 78 percent of Democrats who voted in the midterms say Congress should impeach the president, versus just 17 percent of Democrats who oppose the move.
Outside of Democrats, 57 percent of independents are against impeachment, versus 34 percent who support it. And 94 percent of Republicans oppose it, versus 5 percent who support it.
House Democrats will investigate Trump on a whole range of topics. But any impeachment would likely be based on the Russia affair. As Nadler suggested, Democrats will wait to take action until after special counsel Mueller reports his findings. But as Pelosi noted, Democrats reserve the right to impeach Trump even if Mueller does not uncover evidence of serious wrongdoing.
What is extraordinary, given some Democrats' appetite for impeachment, is how little a role the Russia investigation played in the midterms that brought Democrats to power in the House. Democratic candidates did not campaign on an elect-me-and-I'll-impeach-the-president platform. Indeed, in many races the issue never came up at all. Democratic strategists warned candidates against using the I-word, suggesting they instead pledge to serve as a "check and balance" on the president and hold him "accountable."
Now, however, with the elections safely over, impeachment talk is back. Democratic leaders know that nearly eight out of 10 of their voters want them to impeach Trump. Political leaders do not usually ignore the wishes of eight out of 10 of their supporters.
Perhaps Mueller will produce some shocking new revelation that will turn overall public opinion toward impeachment. In the absence of that, though, it seems difficult to envision a Democratic impeachment attempt succeeding. Which means that, if Democrats plow ahead against the president, they might in the future, like Gingrich and McConnell today, regret the path they chose.
Impeaching Trump will go just as well as impeaching Clinton did.
Unless you drive a guy’s approval down into the 20’s like they did to Nixon it’s a fool’s errand.
“As Dems Weigh Impeachment, GOP Leaders Regret Pursing Clinton”
Someone took away her purse?
Is that like pantsing someone?
Anyway, YAWN.
SSDD.
Spineless quisling soyboy Republicans who failed to jail the corrupt, will now cower before them after allowing another election to be stolen.
There, much more truthful.
In your dreams GOP wussies!
You folks are smart enough to know they’ll do it anyway. Calmer heads will prevail they’re smart but you can’t underestimate the Michael Moores/Diniro’s in the base. Just look at Booker accusing the Ga. Republican of wanting steal the already won election. And this guy may run for POTUS?
It saddens me that even our leaders at the time like Gingrich are unaware of things that happened which I as a common consumer of news am aware of.
Trent Lott and the republicans folded under media pressure and did not conduct a real trial in the senate they panicked and did not permit the appearance of any witnesses.
I’m not saying Clinton would have been convicted but the American people would have been educated about his crimes and in his case he did commit actual crimes as president as well as immoral acts.
I’m sure they’ll regret the upcoming civil conflict festivities too.
Indeed, there has to be a crime of some sort.
Impeach? ON WHAT CHARGE?
If they do it will drive his approval numbers up. I love watching heads explode.
Oh, I believe they are gonna do it. And it will blow-up in their faces like an exploding cigar.
There are people in the Democrat Party who knows it’s a fools errand, but you are right, they won’t be able to resist pressure from their foaming-at-the-mouth moonbat base.
Republicans are perpetually stupid they allowed Clinton to really denigrate the office of president by letting him commit crimes in office. Now they are not going to fully stand up for their own president and they are going to regret having gone after Clinton who is a reprobate and his wife is satan herself.
Only republicans could regret having prosecuted a rapist in the middle of the me too movement.
‘Operation Ham Sandwich’
Can you imagine the impeachment trial in the US Senate? Who is going to the Congressmen/prosecutors? Nadler, Waters, Cummings?
That's what all of the investigations are for.
Republicans really don’t get it. Democrats have been treating rapist Clinton as a great old boy and republicans have been joining them with that pat on the back for a person as reprehensible as Bill Clinton. Now democrats will have no problem manufacturing crimes with which to impeach Trump and republicans will once again panic and go along.
Who is going to lead to prosecution in the senate? Romney of course. He thinks hes going to be president after he destroys trump.
For anything they want.
They just need to convince enough of the public that what they say is impeachable, really is.
I used to joke back in the late 90’s that they can impeach simply if they don’t like the guys haircut.
I could have been a bit prescient back then
Um the US Senate votes. The impeachment trial prosecutors have to be U S House representatives. I doubt Romney would vote to convict after just having won his seat.
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