Impeach Trump, now and forever
It waxes and wanes, but impeaching Trump is always in the air. The only thing that really changes are the reasons given, as each crisis du jour comes in a steady succession.
The hope now is that Ukraine will do the trick. Or is it?:
The Democrats running for president are leading the calls for impeachment. Again, though, the candidate who may crave impeachment the most is Trump.
Absent massive Republican defections, the president knows how the game ends, even as Democrats struggle with whether the plays are worth pursuing.
Democrats know that the Senate is controlled by Republicans right now, and that any impeachment in the House would be doomed in the Senate. They also know – at least, I believe they know – that impeachment is unpopular and would fire up the pro-Trump forces. But all the talk, and the current ramping up of the talk, is red meat for their base. It also serves the purpose of keeping their options open if the Ukraine thing really does ever pan out to be something more than all the previous brouhahas.
I continue to think that they have no intention of doing it prior to the 2020 election. However, let’s say that in 2020, Trump is re-elected but the Democrats hold the House and control the Senate. I think that they still would have no chance of getting the required 2/3 majority of the Senate, unless something extremely and shockingly awful were to be revealed on Trump’s part. I think that, whatever the Democrats’ failing, they can do math.
However, back in the Clinton impeachment days, the Republicans were unable to do the math, and went ahead with the Clinton trial. Yes, I know that many of you probably think that was the right thing to do. I didn’t think so then (I was a Democrat but not a big Clinton fan) and I still don’t think so, for reasons I’ve explained on the blog before and have no intention of going into at the moment.
The Democrats have been trying to impeach Trump from the moment he won the presidency, and in some ways even before that (if such a thing be possible). They cannot believe he is still in office. They cannot believe his popularity seems to have grown rather than shrunk (I haven’t seen any post-Ukraine-scandal polls, but that was the pattern in the past).
They cannot believe they are not in charge of everything, as they clearly deserve to be.
The pain from Ukraine is proving to be lame.
Impeaching Clinton was, obviously, not a wise thing to do. I supported it at the time but even I have to admit it turned out to be a huge waste of time. I’m not sure the GOP really had any other option, however.
Unlike Trump, Bill Clinton actually got caught doing something wrong and then lying about it. As much as you might like to blame Republicans for being stupid, Clinton essentially DARED them to impeach him. I’m not sure the alternative, where Republicans just accepted being Bill Clinton’s bitch and that the same rules don’t apply to Democrats as they do to the GOP, would have worked out any better.
I could be wrong, of course.
Mike
Trump’s popularity has been increasing? And he’s still behind all the major Dems?
lol
Manju:
His approval polls have been increasing.
And I wonder whether you really think that any of these “major Dems” will actually defeat him.
Whether you answer “yes” or “no” (and there’s no requirement that you answer), I still wonder what you really believe – and obviously, not just you, but any Democrat or leftist.
Cappy:
The pain from Ukraine is proving to be lame.
Cappy’s got it, yes Cappy’s got it. 🙂
I’m semi-plugged in to quite a few otherwise sane and intelligent people in the literary world who’ve recently posted earnest messages about how if “we” don’t oppose Trump bigtime right away we may lose democracy forever. These are authors and longtime editors who’ve been well-known and respected for 20, 25 years, some of whose fiction or nonfiction I’ve read and enjoyed. I don’t get it, but then I’m not having dinner-table conversations with them every night whose force I imagine builds up. And they really do assume everyone who is not on their side is just some redneck in bib overalls.
I have one close friend in Hollywood who says everyone he knows dislikes the Squad but I guess they’re just so appalled by Trump being rude. He has sighed and said he thinks he’ll vote for Trump but not tell anyone.
Yeah, just like his numbers where piss poor on 8 November 2016.
“I don’t get it, but then I’m not having dinner-table conversations with them every night whose force I imagine builds up.”
Those folks probably define intelligence, and even moral value, by the ability to use words good. Trump proves that rhetorical acuity is vastly overrated, which means they are as well.
Mike
Well, looking at 538’s aggregator, he started out with a 45.5 – 41.3 approval / disapproval rating. He’s now at 42.5 – 53.7.
I suppose he’s off his lows. But he’s basically flat-lined at pretty perilous ceiling.
Unlike Trump, Bill Clinton actually got caught doing something wrong and then lying about it.
Jim Guy Tucker, the McDougals, and Webb Hubbell were all given prison sentences. And not for process crimes, though Susan McDougal was willing to cool her heels in a federal jail for 18 months rather than answer questions in front of a grand jury under a grant of immunity. And wasn’t it cute how the Rose Law firm billing records were located in the White House residence with Mrs. Clinton’s and only Mrs. Clinton’s fingerprints on them. And oh so amusing about how Billy R. Dale was cleaned out of his savings defending himself against criminal charges on which a federal jury deliberated for all of 90 minutes before acquitting him. And then there was the passion for collectibles you saw in Craig Livingstone and Anthony Marceca.
We had it on the authority of Gene Lyons and Lewis Lapham that the scandals were all a ‘hoax’, and the authority of Meg Greenfield that there was ‘nothing to see there’ move along about the penchant of Livingstone and Marceca for requisitioning confidential FBI files. We need to listen to our social betters, right?
“When you strike at a king, you must kill him.” Ralph Waldo Emerson
I am not one of those that believes the Democrats are insane and/or dumb. The only reason that makes sense to me for this continued talk of impeachment – and based on the very, very weak arguments for it – is that they are keeping their core supporters fired up and chasing contributions. Without the impeachment talk all the news that includes PDT is ok to very good. The Democrat voters would become dispirited and less likely to contribute and vote in the face of good news. So they stir up and manufacture negative stuff about the president.
Or, they’re just dumb. It does have step-on-a-rake quality to it as each of these scandals dissolves like sugar in water.
If the left does end up gaining control of everything, it will be the most Pyrrhic of victories, literally biblical in its consequences.
Stupid is as stupid does and perhaps nothing is as stupid as blithely cutting off the limb upon which you sit.
The manju’s of this world are willfully blind to a certainty; attainment of their goals will result in their being consumed in the resultant inferno that they themselves brought about.
“There is a way that seemeth right unto a man, but the end thereof is the ways of death” Proverbs 14:12 KJV
Neo, For your information …
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oypp6AeB4pg
California highway patrol arrests ….
I would thank Art Deco for that walk down memory lane, but that particular lane is such a nasty place.
I was mad at the Republicans in the 1980’s when some of their decisions affected oil in the U.S. producing states, bringing in middle east oil and dropping U.S. oil prices overnight leaving drilling rigs stacked out all over Texas and Oklahoma, then the tax laws did a job on small business owners with our write offs and depreciation, Ronnie and Bush the 1st with his sand war pissed me off so much I voted for Billy Clinton two damn times. I was wrong.
When it came time to hang Clinton up and all his and her dirty deeds came to light I tried my best to defend them and appreciate what they had done, whatever in the hell that was, until I finally reached a breaking point and decided the Democrats and their boom and bust economies were just as bad as the Republicans so I crossed back over for the last time. It really is hard to change sides and before that happens the tendency is to dig in deeper and back your poor assed decisions for national leadership.
Now we are at a point where we have leadership which is not at all my choice of style, a reasonable direction for the ship of state, decent numbers and employment with no major flash-points overseas and we are supposed to be unhappy because of the news. Impeach Trump because he said something someone overhear 2nd hand while he is totally within his presidential powers to say most anything to anyone in any country unlike the other branches of government. What the hell does a no chance Massachusetts past governor think he did that was treason which would deserve the death penalty which his state has no used since 1984, maybe he wants to take Trump to Salem and burn him for witchcraft.
manju – exit polling still shows that Hillary has it in the bag.
I suppose he’s off his lows. But he’s basically flat-lined at pretty perilous ceiling.
Yes, manju. He might only win 300 electoral votes. There are some who think impeachment fever means the Dims have conceded the election next year.
Prior to election night 2016 I did not appreciate djt on any level. I was, as someone who volunteered to work for Cruz in Iowa (where we won) and Illinois, and Nevada, deeply skeptical that Trump had a conservative bone in his body.
Not ashamed to say I was wrong, despite his public persona otherwise prior to his election. After RR, Trump is more conservative than any other national politician, except Goldwater, in my lifetime. By their deeds you shall know them. I like djt’s fight to push back against the lefts propaganda smears. Refreshing.
I am 74, never voted for a democrate at any level of government. Never trust anyone who believes government that governs most is best. The opposite is reality.
I am a sovereign individual. Don’t tread on me.
Bottom line by Paul Mirengoff:
https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2019/09/when-the-shoe-is-on-the-other-foot.php
Of course, IF a transcript of the phone call is ever released, that might change.
Or maybe not.
https://libertyunyielding.com/2019/09/23/an-actual-no-kidding-reason-for-trumps-review-of-military-aid-to-ukraine/
I think Trump should ask for impeachment.
“You’ve gotta ask yourself a question: ‘Do I feel lucky?’ Well, do ya, punk?”
“Go ahead. Make my day.”
The speech at UN by Greta Thunberg blasts world leaders in emotional speech at U.N. climate summit: ‘How dare you’
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=DYqtXR8iPlE
Its remind me with this one
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=LmfVs3WaE9Y
After Trump is re-elected, there will be continued talk of impeachment; and certainly talk of it will continue thru the election, serving as fund raiser, morale booster, and perhaps most especially protection against the cognitive dissonance of being against a guy whose results are so good.
Will Trump win the House for Reps? If not, the Dems will continue to have leaders in the House with the power to set the agenda and part of that agenda will be to get Trump.
As 2020 moves towards 2024, see how the media brand every Rep as “as bad as Trump”. Those who hate Trump today will, mostly, hate whichever Rep runs in 2024. Most probably Pence, tho possibly also Cruz, and perhaps even Graham; and maybe others still new, like Crenshaw.
That 2024 Rep will be hated by those with Democrat Derangement Syndrome. The current polarization of the USA is based on those with Dem DS being against Reps, specifically Trump for now, but all Reps in general.
Impeach Trump, Kavanaugh; Barr. Hate Bolton, until Trump lets him go, then support Bolton’s critiques against Trump. To many Dems, far too many Dems, the only good Reps are dead ones and those who oppose current Reps.
They need to be laughed at better.
They’re clowns.
As Jack Benny used to say: “Well !!! ”
Now Trump has committed his 12 billionth unforgiveable error (surely impeachable).
He described little Greta as happy ! Ms. Thunberg is grouchier than Sheila Jackson Lee (that’s red alert grouchy).
What a fiend…,
MSM Breaking tomorrow: Trump jilts Melania for Greta!
It sure strikes me as curious that the frenzied news/democrat/deep state/never-Trumper/ruling elite/pro-impeachment charges against Trump seem to have gone into a real frenzy just before the IG report. But then maybe it’s just my conspiratorial nature that makes me notice things like that.
I might even throw in that the possibility of Biden becoming the nominee might make them want to follow the Rules for Radicals and accuse Trump of what Biden was doing to inoculate him before the campaign. But now I’m really deep into my paranoia.
Republicans were indeed green, when they pursued justice in lieu of social justice and progress, assuming that feminists cared about women, girls, superior exploitation (e.g. sexual harassment, #MeToo).
exit polling still shows that Hillary has it in the bag.
She did “win”. Deep Plumber is still flushing the muck from Water Closet, including the soiled remnants of the State and media processed under a cloak of privacy.
@Parker:
You said, “Prior to election night 2016 I did not appreciate djt on any level. I was, as someone who volunteered to work for Cruz in Iowa (where we won) and Illinois, and Nevada, deeply skeptical that Trump had a conservative bone in his body.”
Same here, I was for Cruz in the primary. He seemed the most reliably-conservative option.
However, because Cruz is a very un-photogenic and unlikable man, I had no illusions that he had a snowball’s chance of being elected. I presumed that the fix was in, we were stuck with Hillary, et cetera.
And like you, I didn’t trust that Trump’s worldview proceeded from conservative ideological principles. I assumed he was saying populist things to please crowds, and that upon election, he’d do whatever made him the most popular with the persons most willing to praise him. I suspected (on the basis of his prior history) that this, in practice, would lean moderately-leftwards.
You add, “Not ashamed to say I was wrong, despite his public persona otherwise prior to his election. After RR, Trump is more conservative than any other national politician, except Goldwater, in my lifetime.”
Hmm.
I have to say: I remain cautious about the notion that Trump “is more conservative….”
Don’t get me wrong: I’d crawl over broken glass to vote for Trump in the coming election, because even Tulsi Gabbard (were she to win the Democratic primary, which will never happen) is a vastly-inferior alternative. (And she’s the sane one. The whole rest of that crowd is either frickin’ nuts, or so afraid of offending their base that they have to pretend to be frickin’ nuts. That whole slate of candidates are literally competing for the “frickin’ nuts gold medal.” And there’s little reason to think that people like that wouldn’t mostly continue pandering to the frickin’ nuts crowd after being elected.)
So I’m voting for Trump, because I want conservative governance, and he (much to my surprise and happiness) delivers it.
But I still have significant doubts that he is a conservative.
That would require that he had an ideology, a coherent worldview thought out from the foundations of abstract moral principles all the way up to their practical implementation.
Does Trump seem like that kind of person? He doesn’t, to me.
I think that the Democrats made a huge mistake. If they’d pandered shamelessly to Trump’s ego, saying nice things about him, and excusing anything he did that they found distasteful, he might have helped them out on some areas of policy. Having done so, he might have been discarded as a traitor by his base. And once that happened, he’d have started saying rude things about his (former) base and switched to doing whatever pleased his (new) base. I think he might have governed as a second-coming of Bill Clinton.
Instead, they dumped all over him night and day to a degree that they can now never pull back from. Once you’ve said Mr. X is Hitler, you can’t pull back and say Mr. X ain’t so bad.
So it is now permanently impossible for Trump to find adulation from a left-leaning crowd. The right-leaning crowd is now his only plausible audience. And I think this is a man who loves pleasing an audience.
Finally, as a Republican president, he’s surrounded by right- and center-right-leaning voices. Some of them have tried to corral him, and gotten the boot; others have managed to influence him less confrontationally, and remain influential.
As long as that formula remains in play, I suspect that Donald Trump will continue to deliver conservative governance. He therefore remains the best viable option for conservatives against the ongoing existential threat of leftist cultural domination of nearly every high-ground position in society.
There is a small risk: What if, on some matter like gun control, Trump were to blunder into taking some action which destroyed his base’s confidence in his best intentions?
That could go very badly. It’s not a sure thing that he continues to try to please the same crowd he’s been pleasing up until now. (Especially after winning re-election!) If that crowd were to sour on him, even brand him a traitor on some topic, he could easily shift leftward, and spend his second term undoing some of the conservative gains we’ve achieved in our first term.
This risk is contingent upon my notion that he has no core ideology he’d die for, which serves as the first principles from which he builds his plan of governance.
If he has that — if he is a conservative ontologically, rather than a person who governs conservatively as a result of present circumstances — then there’s nothing to fear other than Google’s and Facebook’s influence on turnout.
But if conservatism is not a core principle for Trump, then it’s important that he feel towards conservatives as a “hometown crowd” during his whole 2nd term.
We’ll see how it goes.
So has Trum killed a single Leftist yet?
Doesn’t seem like anyone is seriously fighting a war here, even though they talk about civil war 2 because everybody else is talking about it
(And she’s the sane one. The whole rest of that crowd is either frickin’ nuts, or so afraid of offending their base that they have to pretend to be frickin’ nuts. That whole slate of candidates are literally competing for the “frickin’ nuts gold medal.” And there’s little reason to think that people like that wouldn’t mostly continue pandering to the frickin’ nuts crowd after being elected.)
RC, I think Marianne Williamson is the most conservative candidate so far that I have seen.
Politically she looks like a Leftist. My analysis is better and deeper than the media talking heads, however. I tend to dig a lot deeper. Which is why I figured out the internal treason and threat of the Leftist alliance in 2007, and not in 2017 or 2015 or whenever Trum and Alt Right “woke up”.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gu_som0ZPmU
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m-tDb7SlkrA&t=677s
“So it is now permanently impossible for Trump to find adulation from a left-leaning crowd. The right-leaning crowd is now his only plausible audience. And I think this is a man who loves pleasing an audience.
Finally, as a Republican president, he’s surrounded by right- and center-right-leaning voices. Some of them have tried to corral him, and gotten the boot; others have managed to influence him less confrontationally, and remain influential.” – RC
Nothing new in these observations, but well-stated.
The question of Trump’s commitment to conservative values, as opposed to popular policies, is also well-taken — and applies to other people who have been President.
We won’t know until there is a conflict between the values and the popularity.
FoxNews headline: “Pelosi expected to announce formal impeachment inquiry against Trump”
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/pelosi-expected-to-announce-formal-impeachment-inquiry-against-trump-at-5-pm-et
The Democrats seem to have lost the plot. But, y’know, okay. Let’s see the crazy fullblown.
If the Republicans in the senate get all squishy on this it will be the end of the party.
From a tweet shown in a RedState post, since The Whistleblower & The Phone Call is not the epicenter of the Impeachment Earthquake .
https://www.redstate.com/bonchie/2019/09/24/trump-authorizes-release-ukraine-call-transcript-liberals-pick-goalposts-throw-ocean/
RBe
@RBPundit
THE PHONE CALL
THE PHONE CALL
THE PHONE CALL
*Trump releases transcript*
NO WAIT. THE OTHER STUFF.
NO WAIT. THE OTHER STUFF.
If the Republicans in the senate get all squishy on this it will be the end of the party.
https://www.c-span.org/video/?c4818880/senate-approves-resolution-calling-administration-turn-whistleblower-complaint-intel-committees
The heart of the issue is what do independents think.
I’m voting Republican even if I have to crawl over cut glass to do so. I imagine that there are many people out there who will do the same for democrats.
How does the center feel?
I’m not in any position to answer that question though it is the most vital one.
Perhaps even finding someone who is TRULY independent is akin to finding a needle opinion a haystack.
My feeling is that there must be millions of voters who aren’t D or R … but I cannot say I know any.
Between St. Greta and the Dem’s Trump impeachment investigation announcement, everyone in my corner of liberal land are kicking up their heels. Funnily enough though, today I saw a first, a car in my town with Trump and NRA stickers.
Ymarsakar,
“RC, I think Marianne Williamson is the most conservative candidate so far that I have seen.”
Hmm. I’ll want you to define how you’re using the term “conservative” before I comment in reply to that.
I have a soft spot in my heart for Williamson and Gabbard both. But it isn’t because my political philosophy and priorities overlap much with the declared priorities of either woman.
It’s because, against the backdrop of so many primary candidates casting prudence-in-policy to the winds and abandoning authenticity in favor of ruthlessly pandering to the primary voters, Williamson and Gabbard both seem to have unpopular (in a Democratic primary) conclusions about the particular policies that it would be wise to pursue, and admit their convictions in venues where those primary voters can hear about it. They seem to lack that unseemly, off-putting craving for power-at-any-cost which has hollowed out their competitors for the nomination.
Re: “I tend to dig a lot deeper. Which is why I figured out the internal treason and threat of the Leftist alliance in 2007, and not in 2017 or 2015 or whenever….”
Again, I have to say: Hmm.
I’m not sure to which “Leftist alliance” threat you are referring. (There are too many possibilities to choose from!) Can you clarify?
I’ve felt that Leftists are a treasonous threat to society since, I think, 1994 or thereabouts. I’m not trying to one-up you or anything. I suspect that the “Leftist alliance” to which you refer is something specific which maybe wasn’t operative, or not in the same way, during the ’90s. I’m just “comparing notes” with you, here: What precisely got your antennae quivering? Why in ’07?
In my own case I think it was postmodernism, though it took me a while before I learned that term. Everywhere I looked there was some “liberal” (as I then called them) who knew their argument included lies but didn’t give a crap, because they had relativized the category of “truth” completely out of their mental landscape. It seems to me that a person who denies the existence of true truth is a traitor to civilization and to humanity itself, and while this makes them also the enemies of the United States, concern for the U.S. is small potatoes against an evil which goes far beyond mere national interests and attacks reason itself.
Ockham’s voluntarism is, perhaps, the earliest emergence of this idea. Reason — Logos, reality-truth, cthia, the internal coherency of the real — must, must always come before will. For one cannot love what one does not know! He who puts the will first has no idea what to will, or in relation to what object to will it. If he is a “rational animal” like us humans, and yet is unwilling to have his will superintended by reason, then he is swayed by the irascible and concupiscent appetites we share with the animals and, thus enslaved, lacks freedom of will. And if he is an unbodied spirit lacking bodily appetites, then the rejection of the primacy of reason over will leaves him with nothing but anti-reason provoking pointless acts of the will towards no end, for no purpose whatsoever: the “mystery of iniquity.”
Small wonder that when this philosophy bore intellectual fruit in the U.S., it took the form of unrestrained indulgence of gonads and narcotics coupled to a grasping drive for power, always wearing a friendly (if unsettlingly wide-eyed and fixed) smile, and claiming the moral high ground of “love.” It wasn’t just Bill Clinton, their standard-bearer, who reeked of this mix. It was the whole ginned-up media defense of that oily rapist — I think every last one of them knew in their hearts that it was true, even back then — enthusiastically pursued in the name of “women’s rights.” It was postmodern to the core: It made no sense, it had no intellectual or moral consistency whatsoever, it scorned to offer even a fig-leaf of an excuse…and yet Slick Willie’s media cheerleaders simply didn’t care.
They seemed to me, even then, to be traitors to thought, traitors to mind, grinning like so many sharks, content merely to eat, excrete, and keep swimming.
I guess nothing since has emerged to change that assessment.
I must have had a flash from Mofo, the Psychic Gorilla™, before I posted earlier this evening.
The Left is so overcommitted to Orange Man Bad that they just didn’t hear David Axelrod and a few other smart people screaming, “Go back! Go back! It’s a trap!’
So sad. Too bad!
“not the epicenter” => “NOW the epicenter”
However, because Cruz is a very un-photogenic and unlikable man,
He’s quite ordinary looking. That aside, the list of people who don’t care for him includes John Boehner, Cocaine Mitch, his puerile college roommate, and miscellaneous swamp creatures. These are attestations of good character.
Ann, so consumed are you with proofreading copy for Bill Kristol, it appears to have escaped your notice that the administration had already agreed to release the complaint.
https://www.politico.com/story/2019/09/24/white-house-whistleblower-complaint-release-1510341
Astroturf?
http://ace.mu.nu/archives/383454.php
This could work for the Dems if they keep the House and gain in the Senate.
However, considering what the voters apparently think about the idea, it seems highly likely that it will cost them votes, in which case they might lose the House, and lose ground in the Senate.