No witnesses
[UPDATE 9 PM: The vote is over, with no surprises on the GOP side. Romney and Collins voted for more witnesses, as did all the Democrats. I’m a little bit surprised – just a little bit – that not a single Democrat in a red state decided to go with the majority and close off witnesses, since this would have helped those Democrats maintain their support in those states and it wouldn’t have changed the outcome one iota. But the Democrats were apparently very stern on party discipline.]
I don’t want to count unhatched chickens, but if no senator goes back on his or her word, the impeachment trial should be wrapping up very very soon, because Senator Murkowski of Alaska has joined Lamar Alexander and announced she plans to vote “no” on witnesses.
BREAKING: GOP Sen. Lisa Murkowski: "I carefully considered the need for additional witnesses and documents, to cure the shortcomings of its process, but ultimately decided that I will vote against considering motions to subpoena." https://t.co/8dPFKZkZJk pic.twitter.com/HB83VKLKcc
— ABC News (@ABC) January 31, 2020
I can think of some Democrat senators (Warren, Sanders, Klobuchar, Bennett) who must be breathing sighs of relief. They get to vote for witnesses but not have to actually sit there and endure listening to them while their 2020 opponents race around the country campaigning.
And now that it no longer matters all that much what they do, perhaps a few other Democrats might vote against witnesses in an attempt to protect their own political futures in states that voted for Trump. Susan Collins will apparently do something similar on the opposite side: in her case, vote for witnesses, hoping that the GOP voters in her state give her a pass on it because they have no viable alternative candidate, while simultaneously hoping that her vote will placate enough moderate Democrats in her state that they will choose her again over the Democrat.
As for Romney, he seems to believe he’s the star of his own morality play. Far more people on the right, however, consider him the villain of his own revenge play (that is, of course, assuming he votes for witnesses). If Romney tries to run for re-election when his term is up in 2024, I assume he will be primaried by a more conservative candidate, probably successfully.
And as for Murkowski, I agree with Allahpundit here:
What would Murkowski have gained by forcing a 50/50 deadlock that would have left John Roberts and McConnell scratching their heads about how to resolve it? By voting this way [no to witnesses], she earns a favor from Trump and Cocaine Mitch and gives Trump fans back in Alaska a reason to forgive her the next time she votes no in a Kavanaugh-magnitude situation.
Will they forgive her? I think it depends on who may try to primary her next time.
The bottom line is that Murkowski and Romney are in red states, so the election of more conservative senators from those states is possible. In Collins’ case, however, she is almost certainly about as conservative as it could ever get, and the state could easily go entirely blue if she is challenged by someone more conservative for the GOP nomination.
However, I’m under no illusion that the drive to impeach Trump, and the attacks on him – as well as clandestine operations against him by the self-styled “Resistance” – are over. They will continue, probably unabated and perhaps even with increased vigor (if such a thing be possible). The Democrats and the “deep state” are desperate to be rid of him, their hatred is a thing of great force, and they believe that the ends justify the means.
It’s a fine thing that — to take the Sen. at her word — consideration not to place the CJ in the position of having to decide whether to break a 50-50 tie played a role in the matrix of elements leading to her rejection of a vote for more witnesses. Decent, right?
Maybe now we’ll have to hear from Shiff for Brains much less.
Or…and stay with me here…Murkowski may have been willing to call witnesses but was completely turned off by the ridiculous and slapdash impeachment process in the House. I’m not sure that’s any less likely that AP’s framing, which is meant to imply Trump is GUILTY, GUILTY, GUILTY but the fix was in all along.
Mike
Read this about Bolton:
https://amgreatness.com/2020/01/30/the-vindman-twins-are-creatures-of-john-bolton/
I take everything with a grain of salt, but Bolton is an arrogant creep who thinks he knows better than everyone else.
Federal and state civil trials are governed by the pretrial statements in which the parties are required to list the witnesses and physical evidence they intend to present in their cases in chief. If testimonial or documentary evidence is not listed, it’s not coming in at trial.
Exceptions can be made in rare and compelling circumstances, but they are never made to advantage a litigant who had the means and opportunity to prepare his or her case, but failed or refused to do so before trial. Period.
The pretrial proceedings controlled by the democrats were the functional equivalent of a bloviating pretrial statement in which they were required to bring forth all of their evidence to support the articles of impeachment they sent to the Senate for trial.
The democrats choose not to prepare their case.
They’re not entitled to new witnesses. That’s it.
Collins is running for re-election next year. Her counterpart Olympia Snowe elected to retire at 65, after 34 years in Congress. Collins will have compiled 24 years in Congress by the end of her current term and previously compiled 11 years as a congressional aide between 1975 and 1987, so should have a satisfactory pension. Given that she’s 67 years old, now would be the time to go as far as most people would be concerned, but she’s elected to seek another term.
Note, Paul LePage has managed to win the Governor’s chair, in spite of being just about the most outre figure in New England politics. There may be a constituency you can mobilize in Maine. Recall the situation in Pennsylvania, where for 40-plus years statewide contests were won only by Rockefeller Republicans and temporizers, ‘ere Rick Santorum showed it could be done.
what was the point of Romney running in Utah besides stealing a seat from another more deserving conservative since that seat was in the bag of the republicans regardless who ran anyway? Not like he did some good for the party for taking a seat from the democrats in a blue state or at the very least a purple state.
Murkowski may have been willing to call witnesses but was
The other explanation is that Sarah Palin sent her a signal that there might be another primary in her future.
what was the point of Romney running in Utah besides stealing a seat from another more deserving conservative since that seat was in the bag of the republicans regardless who ran anyway?
That’s the strangest thing. He runs for a seat in our awful Congress at the age of 71, and carpetbags into Utah to do it. (He has a history of having resided there, but he grew up in Michigan and has spent the bulk of his adult life in Massachusetts). Guy’s got a wife, five children, twenty grandchildren and he’s rich as Croesus. He needs a seat in Congress about as much as he needs a nasty bedsore. I can’t figure why he’s there.
Mitt Romney should be impeached for violating the public trust and abusing his power against Trump for his personal gratification and to serve his personal vendetta against the president for not choosing him as the secretary of state.
any decision you make as politician that will be beneficial to you regardless if will serve the interest of the country is an impeachable crime according to the dems. so basically no politicians can ever propose a tax cut against since who knows if you propose because you want to serve your own interest by paying less tax.
Dave:
Not grounds for impeachment, for the same reasons this impeachment effort against Trump wasn’t grounds for impeachment.
Romney can say he’s voting his conscience, and thinks it best that witnesses be heard. That’s certainly not an illogical position to have.If revenge is part of it, that doesn’t invalidate it. It certainly wouldn’t seem to be a vote that would enhance his own political chances of re-election in Utah, either.
Art Deco:
Nope, Paul LePage says nothing about what would happen with Collins or a more conservative Republican in Maine, for one simple reason: he only won because there were many candidates and that meant a plurality won the whole shebang. In his first election there were 5 candidates, I believe (I’m doing this from memory because I’m pressed for time, but that’s what I recall) and he got some total percentage in the 30s. There were 3 candidates the second time and he got something in the 40s.
Never had a majority. Any senator needs a majority, unless there are strong third and fourth party candidates to change the picture.
In the events that multiple motives can equally explain an action we must accept the worst and most condemning only, according to schiff and his impeachment managers.
Dave:
Only if it’s someone they hate. At the moment, they must like Romney.
Never had a majority. Any senator needs a majority, unless there are strong third and fourth party candidates to change the picture.
LePage won 48% of the vote in a three-candidate race in 2014. A little over 20% of the third candidate’s supporters and he’d have a majority. Inneresting question: does LePage being out-there mobilize more people than it alienates?
Mitt Romney should be impeached for violating the public trust and abusing his power against Trump for his personal gratification and to serve his personal vendetta against the president for not choosing him as the secretary of state.
There are no constitutional provisions providing for the impeachment of a legislator. There are no recalls for federal office, either.
Art Deco:
48% doesn’t win a two-party election. No one knows whether he could have won a two-party election, but I very much doubt it from what I know of Maine.
And this is from his Wiki page:
I believe that the majority of Mainers detested LePage and were mortified that he was their governor. Of course, it’s not beyond the realm of possibility that a less extreme Republican could win – but then you’d have someone like Collins, most likely.
I think I heard Adam Schiff, this afternoon, arguing for witnesses, saying that no recourse to the courts over executive privilege claims would be necessary, since they had the Chief Justice right there to rule. So, here’s the Democrat plan: Put up a bogus impeachment charge and then use the Senate process to bypass all constitutional checks and balances. Got it.
A strategy taken from many a movie dialog:
[leave] No witnesses. Kill them all [with unendurable boredom].
Question put: “Shall it be in order to consider and debate under the impeachment rules any motion to subpoena witnesses or documents?”
Vote: yeas — 49, nays — 51
Collins and Romney were yeas.
51-49 for no witnesses. I can at least understand Collins but Romney is truly outrageous. The fact that he was once the Republican nominee for president says everything about why Republican voters turned to someone like Trump.
+1, Griffin.
“The fact that he was once the Republican nominee for president says everything about why Republican voters turned to someone like Trump.”
You need to remember exactly HOW Romney wound up the nominee.
In 2000, John McCain had a decent shot at beating George W. Bush. A huge chunk of Conservatism, Inc. then joined in the Bush campaign’s despicable savaging of McCain. Flash forward eight years and McCain had kissed enough butts in the GOP establishment to become the front runner and Conservatism, Inc. has a problem. If they support McCain, they’ll be admitting not only to the world but to themselves they are soulless hacks who brutalized McCain in 2000 for no good reason.
Conservatism, Inc. flailed around for someone to stop McCain and all they could come up with is Romney, even though he was markedly LESS conservative than McCain in many ways. So they puffed up Romney as much as they could, which wasn’t enough to beat McCain but was enough to make Romney a top contender in 2008. And again, Conservatism, Inc. couldn’t just trash Romney four years after tongue-bathing him like a momma cat with her kitten without admitting they were soulless hacks.
So Romney cruises to the nomination and put forth such a dispiriting effort that it probably opened the door that first tiny crack to let someone like Trump in.
Those who do not learn from history….
Mike
The fact that he was once the Republican nominee for president says everything about why Republican voters turned to someone like Trump.
What’s interesting is how Bush-pere and Bush-fils said little or nothing over a period of eight years (even in the face of egregious abuses like the IRS scandal) and then family members finally pipe up – to skewer the Republican nominee. And here we have Romney embarking on a pointless tour in Congress, seemingly to make an irritant of himself. Over a period of nearly thirty years, you had four Republican standard-bearers in six elections, and three of them conduct themselves in this manner. Then you recall the Republican Speaker of the House in the fall of 2016 playing the dithering nincompoop, undermining his own party’s candidate. You recall his lushington predecessor, whose idea of a threat to the Republic was….Ted Cruz. You recall his grafteur of a predecessor, who supervised the House Republican Caucus for eight years – a man with some skeletons in his closet. There’s a great deal of failure theatre in the Republican Party, and Trump demonstrates that by contrast.
Trump should open his state of the union with, “The Trump Presidency is still alive and Soleimani is still dead.”
Conservatism, Inc. flailed around for someone to stop McCain and all they could come up with is Romney, even though he was markedly LESS conservative than McCain in many ways
Your problem, over a period of nearly 30 years, was the Republican voter. Roughly 1/3 of the Republican electorate routinely voted for the same person every four years: The Guy Whose Turn It Is. You had alternatives to The Guy Whose Turn It Is, but most of these were demonstration candidates rallying a constituency or pressing an issue. The only ones who were something more than that were Mike Huckabee, Rick Santorum, and Newt Gingrich. In re Huckabee and Santorum, it came to be evident later that they had their moment and when it was gone, it was gone. It’s interesting to speculate what happened in 2016, because about 70% of the Republican electorate rejected every candidate the Capitol Hill nexus might have wanted and another 5% cast their ballots for off-brand candidates who had no constituency on Capitol Hill (e.g. Huckabee, Santorum, Fiorina, Carson, Rand Paul, &c). That’s quite a flunking grade for the Republican establishment. What happened to The Guy Whose Turn It Is voting bloc? Well, there was so such person in 2016; Rick Santorum is too principled (‘divisive’) for that role and Mike Huckabee too much of an original. One thing that may have happened is that those people stayed home, because they didn’t know what to do with themselves (other than watch Jeb Bush and his staff make a bonfire of quite a mess of donor money).
The Democrats took advantage of the ‘good old boy, fine fellow, well met’ club of the GOP, Bush Sr. got wrapped up by a ‘good old boy from Arkansas who stole the show. Bush number 2 almost got wiped out when he won the election the first time and then gave most of the goodies away to please and appease the Dems during his two terms. The best thing he did was not renew the gun ban on real regular guns however he sure sunk us into some wars we did not seem to intend to win and they are still going on. Trump called him out on some of his stuff along with calling out Romney and McCain when he, Trump was making his way to winning by talking to the people who actually vote.
To bad, so sad Romney got his feelings hurt and Bush did not like his brother stomped on as Trump went on to win one for the GOP. Now that the unthinkable is happening, it appears the people want to have a chance to elect Trump to a second term, I am one year older than Trump and have no idea where he has the energy but he does, how he has managed to get a lot of good things done while they have been nipping at his heels since day one I have no idea but while I kind of tolerated him for a long time I am actually beginning to like the man.
Trump in 2020, who knew four years ago we would be here?
I believe that the majority of Mainers detested LePage and were mortified that he was their governor.
Candidate number 3 one 8.4% of the vote. LePage won 48.2%. The math is as follows:
50-48.2 = 1.8;
1.8 / 8.4 = .214.
Plausible, though not a slam dunk.
but then you’d have someone like Collins, most likely.
Quite a swath of territory between LePage and Collins.
do people realize how ridiculous it is logic wise that the democrats tried to use their political powers to destroy their political enemy by accusing him of using his political power to destroy his political enemy. if they believed they could do that to trump why are they contradicting themselves by saying trump can’t do it to biden? why couldn’t trump destroy biden using biden and his son’s corruption, its their duty not to do crimes that could be used by trump to destroy them, its not trump’s duty not to use bidens’ corruption to destroy him.
Here’s an interesting and perhaps illuminating new piece about John Bolton, and his hiring of the two Vindman brothers to work at key spots in the White House, by an author who–from the tone of this article–has no use at all for John Bolton.
Bolton’s testimony, even if it is exactly as the leak by the NYTs, will provide nothing but a revelation of his differences with Trump on foreign policy. Not an impeachable offense.
Some say that asking Zelensky to look into the 2016 election interference by Ukraine and l’affaire Biden was inappropriate. Horse hockey! Both issues were worth getting some answers for the American people. That the Dems don’t want any such answers to be known is obvious.
The Democrats are playing a game of stall and intend to use innuendo, opinion, and hearsay to try to damage the POTUS further. Scumbags!
“Your problem, over a period of nearly 30 years, was the Republican voter.”
Not quite. Voters carry their own responsibility, of course, but you’re obfuscating the point I’m making.
Bush and McCain split the first seven contests in 2000 4 to 3 for Bush and that was with McCain skipping Iowa. While Bush was the front runner, McCain was an entirely credible challenger at the start of the primaries and he was DESTROYED by the media and pundits of Conservatism, Inc. And while it’s probably true that McCain in 2008 and Romney in 2012 benefited from being The Guy Whose Turn It Is, my point is that savaging McCain in 2000 eventually led to Conservatism, Inc. elevating Romney and that is what made Romney The Guy Whose Turn It Is.
As for why Conservatism, Inc. backed Romney instead of Huckabee in 2008, that’s a whole ‘nother subject.
Mike
was inappropriate.
A formulation favored by passive-aggressive types employed in the school system.
and he was DESTROYED by the media and pundits of Conservatism, Inc.
That’s a very peculiar interpretation of the sequence of events. The joke at the time was that the media was his constituency (“Sen. John McCain, R-Media”). There was resistance to McCain’s candidacy in Congress; he had a bad temper and yelling something that rhymes with “Brother Trucker” at your colleagues does tend to alienate them. AEI and Heritage don’t take institutional stances on campaigns. I seem to recall most of the crew at The Weekly Standard favored him, as did Jonah Goldberg (then editor of National Review Online). The complaint I do recall was that the Bush campaign had used skeevy push polling techniques in the South Carolina primary.
you can’t investigate a political opponent according to shciff therefore democrats can’t investigate President Trump
“However, I’m under no illusion that the drive to impeach Trump, and the attacks on him – as well as clandestine operations against him by the self-styled “Resistance” – are over. They will continue, probably unabated and perhaps even with increased vigor (if such a thing be possible). The Democrats and the “deep state” are desperate to be rid of him, their hatred is a thing of great force, and they believe that the ends justify the means.” – Neo
* * *
I have decided that the Democrats are the actual instantiation of the Walking Dead: a zombie political party that simply will not realize when it is “dead” – Gore wouldn’t admit he lost to Bush; Hillary won’t admit she lost to Trump; no Democrat admits Mueller’s report killed their narrative; and now they won’t accept a “not guilty” verdict from the Senate.
What kind of stake through the heart does it take to get them to admit they lost?
PS The EU Chair & her crew are part of the same tribe, European Clan.
Bill M on January 31, 2020 at 6:45 pm said:
Trump should open his state of the union with, “The Trump Presidency is still alive and Soleimani is still dead.”
* * *
Up-twinkles!
expat on January 31, 2020 at 3:24 pm said:
Read this about Bolton:
https://amgreatness.com/2020/01/30/the-vindman-twins-are-creatures-of-john-bolton/
I take everything with a grain of salt, but Bolton is an arrogant creep who thinks he knows better than everyone else.
* * *
That’s very interesting, but why is it only must now coming out?
It couldn’t have been much of a secret — not in DC anyway.
“I have decided that the Democrats are the actual instantiation of the Walking Dead: a zombie political party that simply will not realize when it is “dead””
I’ve checked a few liberal blogs, so this certainly isn’t an exhaustive analysis, but it is astounding that they still believe their side did nothing wrong. I don’t mean changing their mind about Trump. I mean not being even able to acknowledge that Schiff, Nadler and the House Managers may have done a poor job making their case. I mean not granting that the incredibly unfair way the House conducted its impeachment hearings may have poisoned the well. You know, like how not letting Trump call any witnesses made their pleas for more witnesses seem like hypocritical garbage.
Nope. Every single thing they’ve done has been absolutely just and appropriate in every way. They’ve made no mistakes. They’ve committed no errors. They haven’t been wrong about a single thing.
This is how the Dems are going to get Presidential nominee Bernie Sanders because when the normals start acting nuts, the nuts starting looking normal.
Mike
“That’s a very peculiar interpretation of the sequence of events.”
Here’s a little something to refresh your memory. You have heard of these things called “search engines” that access this thing called “the internet”…right?
https://www.nytimes.com/2000/02/19/us/the-2000-campaign-political-memo-mccain-fits-quite-well-among-his-attackers.html
Conservative resistance to McCain was a little closer to my recollection than yours. Though if you think Bill Kristol and The Weekly Standard were ever all that conservative, it would explain the difference.
Mike
Found in PowerLine comments
CapnRusty lydia • 6 hours ago
Babylon Bee ran a headline a few days ago:
“Democrats are concerned that American citizens may try to interfere in the 2020 Election.”
Sadly, I couldn’t find that particular post (anybody else have a link?) and stories fall off the main page so fast I thought I would just put a few here so we can end the day with some laughs.
Which the Democrats really, really, hate.
Despite the EU Chair’s admonition.
https://babylonbee.com/news/hick-farmers-retaliate-against-coastal-elites-by-withholding-ingredients-needed-to-make-avocado-toast
https://babylonbee.com/news/dems-who-ran-sham-impeachment-hearings-shocked-as-republicans-run-sham-impeachment-trial
https://babylonbee.com/news/uh-oh-bernie-campaign-sends-texts-informing-people-theyve-been-selected-for-the-gulags
Some more topical news you can use while you schmooze, or maybe just snooze.
https://babylonbee.com/news/the-bee-explains-coronavirus
https://babylonbee.com/news/the-babylon-bee-purchases-competing-satire-site-cnn-for-12-billion
I just finished my first project for “Design of Large Programs” a whole three hours ahead of the midnight deadline. And now I find the impeachment swirling down the john! A good night.
This morning I heard a liberal cafe friend a table over cursing Republicans for preventing more witnesses and documents. Before that a conservative cafe friend at the counter was gloating over the imminent failure of impeachment. It’s a wild, wacky world.
Meanwhile, the Wuhan virus is up to 11,374 confirmed cases and 259 deaths. Exponential curves doing their thing. A few experts say that the real number of cases is 5-10x higher.
It’s only taken Wuhan two months to blow past SARS in cases (8000 in nine months). Wuhan is apparently about half as lethal as SARS so it will take a while to pass the SARS death number (774), but that number will fall within 4-5 days.
The rough guess is Wuhan’s mortality is around 1-2%. Which is not that impressive compared to say, Ebola or even SARS. But so far Wuhan is more contagious than SARS.
However, for comparison, regular influenza’s mortality is only one in a thousand. The large number of deaths regular flu causes is because flu circulates in the general population.
If the Wuhan virus were to reach that level of prevalence, we would be seeing quite a lot of people dying. Not a threat to civilization, but enough to put a definite crimp in everyone’s lives.
https://thefederalist.com/2020/01/31/yes-trumps-acquittal-is-real-and-its-spectacular/
i find it funny that when Democrats insist to have witnesses they argue that all criminal courts would have witnesses but when you point out all criminal courts would have a crime to indict the accused first instead of starting out without any criminal conducts then try to find a crime in the testimonies of witnesses after the trial started, they rebuke by saying this is not a criminal court. democrats don’t need consistency in their arguments, each rebuttal only needs to defeat the question its facing but the rebuttals made by the same liberal don’t have to be consistent and they don’t care if their rebuttals all contradict each other.
Patton 2020 – coming soon to voting booths near you.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jVhA09sQ-3k&feature=youtu.be
A few awkward moments, IMO, but a rollicking parody, especially if you liked the original movie, as I did.
You know, it just occurred to me what is different between this and the Clinton impeachment. Removal in both cases were equally unlikely but, and please correct me if I’m misremembering it, there seemed to be a point when Republicans knew they weren’t going to boot Clinton out of the Oval Office but kept going because they really did feel it was the right thing to do,
Democrats may think they’re doing the right thing but it seems like they also thought they were going to win. That they could treat Trump with blatant unfairness in the House hearings and it wouldn’t matter. That they’d make demands on the Senate and the GOP would back down. That they could berate and impugn Senators and that would be persuasive. That if they could just get another witness, THAT would finally change the other side’s minds.
Mike
It really is strange the tone that the House managers took with regards to the Senate. The lies and smears about the senators motives is a very weird way to win over on the fence squishs. I guess the only logical way to explain it was they knew they were going to lose so why not just play to the media and the nutters in their party.
Could they have got a couple more votes to get witnesses if they were more professional. Maybe.
As of 2-1-20 – No witnesses. Schedule: Process will wrap up Wednesday.
Plenty of time for one or more Dem/MSM “bombshells”.
The left will keep up the bombardment all the way to election day.
Democrats may think they’re doing the right thing but it seems like they also thought they were going to win.
I doubt they ever thought that. It’s all a skeevy public relations game. Red meat for the worst of their constituency and a conduit to force blue state Republicans to make potentially embarrassing votes. If there are any decent people in the Congressional Democratic caucus, they are very quiet.
Though if you think Bill Kristol and The Weekly Standard were ever all that conservative, it would explain the difference.
You were the one who brought up opinion journalists. At the time, you had six publications which traded in topical commentary (leaving aside the quasi-academic and policy wonk publications): National Review, The Weekly Standard, The American Spectator, Commentary, Human Events, and Chronicles. This last was a cranky palaeo publication hostile to the conventional right. The others were not antagonists, just differently formatted.
He was a perfectly mainline Republican from 1980 to 2015. He did work on Daniel Patrick Moynihan’s campaign in 1976. Moynihan during the period running from 1965 to 1981 was very much a dissenter in the Democratic Party.
“You were the one who brought up opinion journalists.”
I brought up Conservatism, Inc., a term I’ve seen elsewhere to describe the blob of think tanks, activists, advocates, media outlets, and pundits that pretty much defined discussion on the Right. My NYT link demonstrates my point, that there was far more and far more vehement opposition to McCain from that group than could be justified by the facts, which led to many of them supporting Romney in 2008, which paved the way for nominee Romney in 2012.
And while it is true not every single member of Conservatism, Inc. was anti-McCain, I don’t think that lack of universality weakens my argument.
As for Kristol, I think it’s obvious that he’s revealed himself as never really being a conservative at all, like many other NeverTrumpers. Max Boot recently admitted he knew nothing about Goldwater and was shocked to find out what a horrible “racist” he was. Tom Nichols just openly declared he’ll be voting for socialist Bernie Sanders over Trump.
Whatever these people are, they are not conservatives. And no, that doesn’t apply to all conservative Trump critics or even all NeverTrumpers. But if you throw out everything you claimed to believe over Donald Trump, you didn’t honestly believe it in the first place.
Mike
I brought up Conservatism, Inc., a term I’ve seen elsewhere to describe the blob of think tanks, activists, advocates, media outlets, and pundits that pretty much defined discussion on the Right.
I just listed the outlets. You could add the commentary programs on Fox and a few syndicated columnists. Again, the think tanks do not take institutional positions on campaigns, so you’d have to name employees who produce topical commentary. The only one that comes to mind is Mona Charen, who has been rather more circumspect than most of the NeverTrump crew.
Here’s an antique commentary from Jonah Goldberg on his support for John McCain (whom Wm Kristol also endorsed). https://www.nationalreview.com/2000/03/mccains-still-my-guy-jonah-goldberg/. I’m just not understanding your thesis that ‘Conservatism, Inc.’ destroyed McCain when here are a couple of pillars of it endorsing him. (Both these pillars are inveterately hostile to Trump right now). Note, he discusses Marvin Olasky’s support for Bush. Olasky’s an academic in Texas who edits World magazine on the side. He’s not what Samuel Francis used to call a ‘courtier intellectual’ at all.
As for Kristol, I think it’s obvious that he’s revealed himself as never really being a conservative at all, like many other NeverTrumpers. Max Boot recently admitted he knew nothing about Goldwater and was shocked to find out what a horrible “racist” he was. Tom Nichols just openly declared he’ll be voting for socialist Bernie Sanders over Trump.
Well, you’ve named three people. Nichols is on the faculty of the Naval War College. His CV lists precisely one article in the starboard press out of 30 years worth of publications in all kinds of venues. This one piece consisted of some remarks in National Review Online penned in 2009. I don’t see how he counts as ‘Conservatism, Inc.’ Max Boot worked for The Wall Street Journal, the Council on Foreign Relations, Commentary, and, a tad, for National Review (four articles placed during the years running from 2013 to 2017). He has been a fairly inconsequential figure in the small ponds he’s worked in (with which, bar the Council on Foreign Relations, he is no longer associated). Our moderator here knows Wm. Kristol personally and she doesn’t quite understand the set of stances he’s taken in the last five years, so I’m not sure why you fancy you have great insight.
Maine is blue by default but its independent voters, the largest voting bloc, often are attracted to strong and independent leaders. Ross Perot nearly won the state in his presidential bid and LePage brought out inactive voters in droves, just has Trump.
Collins, despite the strong push against her, should easily win re-election if she continues to express and articulate her views as well as she did in her Kavanaugh vote.
Another thing going for her: unlike her liberal counterparts in Congress, Angus King and Chellie Pingree, who grew up out of state, she’s as grassroots as they come.
A big reason Warren and Sanders, and other demorats, will breathe a sigh of relief is that they’re now not going to be required to either implicate themselves in impeachable offenses OR perjure themselves before the Senate and the Chief Justice.
“This is how the Dems are going to get Presidential nominee Bernie Sanders because when the normals start acting nuts, the nuts starting looking normal.” –
Mike (MBunge)
* * *
At this point, I’m not sure there’s really any distinction.
Griffin on February 1, 2020 at 1:22 am said:
It really is strange the tone that the House managers took with regards to the Senate. The lies and smears about the senators motives is a very weird way to win over on the fence squishs. I guess the only logical way to explain it was they knew they were going to lose so why not just play to the media and the nutters in their party.
Could they have got a couple more votes to get witnesses if they were more professional. Maybe.
* * *
Jonathan Turley agrees with you.
https://pjmedia.com/trending/jerry-nadler-made-a-huge-blunder-during-impeachment-trial-says-jonathan-turley/
They may have been playing to the gallery, but given the usual success of woke-shaming and PC-punishments, they may seriously have expected their tactic to work.
Maybe the Republican Senate isn’t totally full of snowflakes after all.
Stop being surprised by a partyline for the left. You’re going to see another one on Wednesday.