Who is more disgraced, Trump or the Democrats in the House?
I know my answer: the Democrats in the House are completely disgraced.
The Democrats and the MSM would of course say: Trump. But they feel that Trump is continually disgracing himself.
Or, at least they’d like you to think that. What do they really feel, in their heart of hearts? I don’t know for sure, but I doubt they’re feeling as great right now as they expected to. Now the Senate stands in their way.
Pelosi’s ploy to control the Senate as well as her caucus in the House (by delaying sending the impeachment articles to the Senate) seems to be falling on deaf ears, and Mitch McConnell appears to actually be having some fun with it and getting in some rather pointed barbs:
McConnell will say those articles are “fundamentally unlike any articles that any prior House of Representatives has ever passed” and the idea Democrats will withhold the articles suggests “House Democrats may be too afraid to even transmit their shoddy work product to the Senate.”
Trump himself is getting in his digs:
I got Impeached last night without one Republican vote being cast with the Do Nothing Dems on their continuation of the greatest Witch Hunt in American history. Now the Do Nothing Party want to Do Nothing with the Articles & not deliver them to the Senate, but it’s Senate’s call!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 19, 2019
Now, you might say this is all play-acting, and that the Republicans are actually devastated. But I don’t think so. For now at least, impeachment seems to be acting like a boomerang that’s on its way back towards the Democrats’ themselves.
The words disgrace and shame should take their place alongside Pillory. On the other side, nobody is shocked anymore. We live in different times.
Carlyle: “The story they told men was a cunningly devised fable; the gospels they preached to them were not an account of man’s real position in this world, but an incoherent fabrication, of dead ghosts and unborn shadows, of traditions, cants, indolences, cowardices, — a falsity of -falsities, which at last ceases to stick together. Wilfully and against their will, these high units of mankind were cheats, then; and the low millions who believed in them were dupes, —a kind of inverse cheats, too, or they would not have believed in them so long. “
Chrissy Clark, The Federalist: Graham Blasts Pelosi: You Don’t Get To Be House Speaker And Senate Majority Leader At Same Time
Yes, the country was so devastated that the Dow pushed to new highs +138, and the Nasdaq too, +60.
I was wrong to think that it would matter that the Constitution requires a crime, and yet the articles of impeachment had no alleged crime. While I never thought it would make a huge difference, I thought it might have influence at the margins. Possibly it did, in that we haven’t had any members of the GOPe turn to the dark side. Yet.
Increasingly, our national debates are becoming substance free. Did folks know that a $1.4T spending bill was passed while our representatives were hyperventilating about impeachment?
It is a testament of how clean Trump as a politician actually is that despite holding such degree of contempt for him and with these many obama holdovers monitoring his every action this trivial matter on such flimsy basis is all they could find to impeach him. The joke will be on the dems when people look back today.
If I were to use an American football analogy I would say Pelosi just called an audible, withheld the transmission of the Articles of Impeachment, and threw a Hail Mary pass. I am no legal scholar but is it possible for her to release the Articles of Impeachment just before the election so they never have a chance to be litigated in the Senate? That means that if Trump is re-elected, and by chance there is a Democrat controlled Senate, then Trump can be removed from the office. I am assuming there is no time limit on the validity of the Article of Impeachment. That would make for a perfect “insurance policy”. To paraphrase Rahm Emanuel, never let an impeachment go to waste.
“I am no legal scholar but is it possible for her to release the Articles of Impeachment just before the election so they never have a chance to be litigated in the Senate?”
I believe I am second to very few in my contempt for our political elites, but even I think they would choke on trying something like that.
Mike
The Democrats are disgracing themselves. All are abusing their offices, but this will only count if the American people rid the House of such disgusting House members.
It’s not clear that will happen, meaning it’s clear lots of Americans think Trump is worse than such slimy Democrats.
This sad state of American affairs is mostly due to decades of college discrimination against hiring Rep professors. This leads to acceptance of polarization and demonization, and emotional hate binges rather that attempts to logically persuade others.
Dem Indoctrination centers should lose all tax-exempt status. Students who are Republicans at colleges which advertise “diversity” should be suing their colleges for false advertising. And winning.
An impeachment parody of A Man For All Seasons. (Or is it?)
Schiff: I wish to call Vindman.
Schiff: We will dispense with the swearing in since we all know he is telling the truth.
Schiff: Were you on the call with the Ukrainian minister?
Vindman: Yes I was.
Schiff: Did you hear the conversation regarding aid?
Vindman: Yes.
Schiff: Tell us what you heard.
Vindman: Trump said, “I need a favor from you. I want you to investigate Biden.”
Trump: But we have a transcript of the call.
Pelosi: Silence! Continue.
Vindman: Trump said he would withhold the aid unless Ukraine reopened the investigation into Biden. It was in his own words, “quid pro quo,” or words to that effect.
Schiff: So he offered a bribe to a foreign country to intimidate his political rival.
Vindman: He did or so I presume.
Schiff: Do you deny this?
Trump: I do. Is it probable? Is it probable that after such a long Mueller investigation on this very point of foreign interference that, on a call monitored by all kinds of people, that I would offer a bribe or quid pro quo?
Schiff: The House should now retire to deliberate.
Pelosi: Considering the evidence, it shouldn’t be necessary for them to deliberate is it?
Dems and the media all shout No!
Pelosi: What is the verdict?
Dems and the media all shout Guilty!
Pelosi: Mr. Trump, you have been found guilty of treason, bribery, making our jobs harder by having to deal with you and making people cry with your tweets. I now sentence you to…
Trump: I have something to say. After I and our country have endured investigation after investigation, from the FBI and CIA to Mueller and you, how I was found guilty of anything, only God knows how.
Pelosi: Now we see you are malicious and treasonous when the people’s representatives have convicted you by your own words.
Trump: Not so, I love the people and my country. I work on their behalf to have greater opportunities and protect them. Nevertheless. It is not for Russia or Ukraine that you have sought my impeachment. It is because I would not lose the election!
Dems and the media scream with outrage.
I feel the same way I have felt since I read the transcript of the Kerensky call. There is nothing to this. The Democrats have embarrassed themselves and are attempting to deflect attention away from anything but the headline, “Trump Impeached.”
Pelosi really isn’t very good at her job. McConnell is very good at his. Graham has finally found a voice that goes beyond singing duets with McCain.
It’s a been pretty good year,all in all, starting with the unmasking of Mueller.
Every time I’m unfortunate enough to hear those on the other side express their view of all this, I feel that I’ve jumped through the looking glass. I don’t get – in any way at all – how my friends on the Left can look at the same facts that I’ve been looking at and come to such radically different conclusions. How do you read the phone call transcript, hear the witness (“witness”!) testimony, note that no subpoenas were adjudicated, and still believe with your whole being that, first, the President is a would-be dictator who was putting the screws to an ally invaluable to American national security, and second, the President showed his would-be dictator stripes by defying (“defying”!) a coequal branch of government?
Jamie:
Confirmation bias.
And reading only sources on the left, and being surrounded by people who think the same as you.
eeyore on December 19, 2019 at 5:42 pm said:
An impeachment parody of A Man For All Seasons. (Or is it?)
* * *
Bravo.
I would add:
Trump: “When statesmen forsake their own private conscience for the sake of their public duties, they lead their country by a short route to chaos.” …
“Why Adam, it profits a man nothing to give his soul for the whole world. . . but for Congress!”
AesopFan,
Thank you for your addition as I couldn’t figure out how to work that bit in. It enhanced my small work by quite a bit.
neo – yes, confirmation bias, surely – but what in the transcript or witness testimony confirms what they believe? Yet they’ll cite both as evidence of their opinion, apparently oblivious to the fact that their opinion (like the witness testimony) rests flatly and solely on their making suppositions about the President’s state of mind and unspoken intent.
I think it’s over at Althouse that there’s a commenter who’s constantly trying to get Althouse’s goat about feminism. This commenter is forever saying things like, “This is what you get when you let women vote/hold public office/whatever. It’s all about the feelz.” She doesn’t rise to his (I assume “his”) bait, nor does anyone else any more. But my Lord, I’m almost starting to agree with him. The entire American Left seems to be like me fighting with my now-husband when we were first dating, when I was always drawing bootless inferences about what he was really thinking, what he really meant by whatever comment or action, and attacking him on that basis. He’d put up his hands in front of him as if to fend me off, his eyes would bug out, and he’d exclaim, “What are you talking about? I got myself another beer but didn’t get you one because you still had three-quarters of yours! Do you want another right now? Because I’ll get you one – but you still have three-quarters of yours.”
(It’s a miracle we got married at all, much less have stayed that way for a quarter century. If he hadn’t been as stupid and messed up as I was, only in complementary ways, it never would’ve worked.)
But WRT the confirmation bias on the Left: two things. First, it scares me a little that I am also, of course, subject to confirmation bias. Throughout this goat-rope I’ve been trying to be sure to go to original sources and make up my mind about what they actually do or say rather than what I’d like them to do or say, but it’s still disconcerting to realize that I might be misreading things too.
Second, I suppose I should accept the fact (the prima facie fact, since I’m trying to avoid inference) that for reasons I don’t understand, the American Left made up its mind about Trump at the same time that it made up its mind about, say, W. Bush – that is, before either one actually did or said anything. I understand, in the political realm, making up your mind about your as-yet-unknown opponent’s general political philosophy and perhaps his likely policy proscriptions based on his party. But the Leftist tendency to make up their minds about the personality, moral character, life goals, and probably recycling habits of their political opponents will never – never – make sense to me.
. . . come to such radically different conclusions.
You have a temporal disorder in this expression Jamie, namely, there is no “come to” going on, for the conclusion is where of necessity the political argument has begun, not ended.
Once the end — the conclusion — has been determined, a search begins for apparent “facts”, particles designed, selected, to make a magical syllogistic seeming progression toward the needful (already determinate) conclusion.
“Make it so”, said Capt. Picard. There is no search for truth going on. Nope, it’s the farthest thing from that.