How can he be removed, and would that even help? I agree with this analysis of both impeachment and the 25th Amendment as methods to remove Biden. I was planning to write something similar, so now I don’t have to and I’ll just quote from it:

The Constitution has no proviso for the Joe Biden/Kamala Harris catastrophe, except for a series of impeachments, 25th Amendment removal, and waiting it out until 2024.

A disabled Biden won’t be removed unless his cabinet says so… and Biden’s cabinet members are happy to have a crash dummy wherein they can romp without any guide rails. Impeachment is breath-wasting banter as House Speaker Nancy Pelosi would never assemble let alone schedule a vote on articles to impeach Joe Biden.

But assuming both Biden and Harris are impeached, who would replace them? Pelosi and then Dem Senator and Senate President Pro-Tem Patrick Leahy are next in line.

Can the Republicans arrange an omnibus impeachment to eliminate all of the toxic or incompetent successors? Rhetorical speculations of that sort are unserious clickbait.

Would the House and Senate Republicans, as a unified bloc, stymie and neutralize any Democrat agendas? Uh, no.

As for the last paragraph – the Republicans in Congress may not be unified in general, but they are relatively unified in their disapproval of what Biden has done and some of the most extreme things the Democrats are planning. I’m referring to the fact that the Republicans in Congress have already “stymied” several of the Democrats’ most dearly-embraced plans: removing the filibuster, packing the Court, DC statehood. To be more accurate, what mattered is the fact that the GOP really did present a unified front on those issues and were joined by two Democrats on the need to continue the filibuster. The two Democrats were Manchin and Sinema, and without their votes the Democrats were powerless to do away with the filibuster unless a Republican (or two, if both those Democrats had held firm) broke ranks and voted with the Democrats.

No Republican did break ranks or it would have been all over. If the filibuster had been done away with, even a totally united GOP would lack the power to block much of anything unless a Senate Democrat or two joined them on whatever the issue might be.

That’s the reality of having a Democrat president, Democrat House, and Democrat Senate bent on increasing their power so that it will be permanent. It’s also the reality of having an abominable president and vice-president.

Democrats and especially leftists were only in favor of protecting minority rights while there was a chance that they would be the minority. If they can fix it so that they remain a permanent majority, almost all of them would be perfectly happy if the minority had few or no rights.

We have never been in a more dangerous situation in my lifetime – and probably even longer than that. Since the Civil War, perhaps? Or the early years of World War II, when the Allies were doing poorly?

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If you look back on the history of US presidential impeachments, you will find a great deal of partisanship in the support for impeachment and removal, except for the impeachment that didn’t happen: that of Nixon, whose opposition was so bipartisan that he realized Senate conviction was likely and he stepped down before the impeachment ever occurred.

You will also find that the majority of the bipartisanship and/or crossing of party lines was by Republicans rather than Democrats, and it was Republicans voting against impeachment and/or removal of a Democrat president. This will probably not be a surprise. Democrats tended much more to vote as a bloc for impeachment and/or removal of a Republican president.

Take a look at the vote on the impeachment of Democrat Andrew Johnson. Republicans held an enormous majority in the House, and there were only 4 defections out of 126 GOP House members voting “yea” to impeachment. Of the 47 Democrats, only 2 went against their party to vote “yea” instead of “nay.” So the House vote was highly partisan. However, in the Senate – also very strongly controlled by Republicans (45 to 9) – something quite different happened. Of the total of 45 Republicans, 10 voted for acquittal, which was just enough to acquit Johnson by a single vote.

Nixon I’ve already discussed, but for Clinton we had a House vote that was mixed on the different articles. On the first article (perjury to the grand jury), there were 5 crossovers from each party. On the second (perjury in the Jones case) there were also 5 Democratic crossovers but 28 on the GOP side, and so that measure failed. On the third (obstruction of justice) there were 5 Democratic crossovers and 12 GOP ones; the measure passed. On the fourth (abuse of power), there was 1 Democratic crossover to 81 Republicans who crossed over, and the measure failed.

In Clinton’s Senate trial, every single Democrat voted for acquittal on both counts. Even if every Republican had voted to convict, there would not have been a 2/3 majority to remove Clinton. But 10 Republican senators voted against the first article and 5 voted against the second, a bipartisan vote on the GOP side only. This resulted in the first article not even getting a majority, and the second only getting a tie vote.

Interesting, no?

Which brings us to the recent impeachment of Trump. In the House, no Republican voted for either article, and only 2 Democrats crossed lines on the first article and 3 on the second. Extremely partisan. And I don’t even have to link to the Senate vote, because it’s easy to remember there was only one crossover, Mitt Romney. Almost completely partisan, the most partisan in the history of US impeachment trials.

Which indicates another interesting point: impeachment may happen again and again, since the bar is so low. But as far as conviction goes, if Democrats ever control the Senate by 2/3 and there is a Republican president, he or she may stand a good chance of being removed on a party-line vote. But if the GOP ever gets control of that much of the Senate and there is a Democratic president, removal would be less likely, at least if you look at the historical precedent.

However, at this point things have gotten so polarized that it also could happen. All bets are off.

Fortunately, that sort of imbalance hasn’t occurred in recent decades. During FDR’s tenure the Democrats had huge Senate majorities, but of course FDR was a Democrat as well. The same was true for Lyndon Johnson.

One can only conclude that the Founders knew what they were doing in setting so high a bar. Of course, that doesn’t stop the sort of stunts that the Democrats pulled this time, impeaching because they could do it and because they thought it would help them politically despite the fact that they would not and really could not secure removal.

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It is unsurprising but still astounding that with such a weak case – or rather, a non-existent case – every single Democrat voted for removal. Every one. Now, that’s party discipline.

Note that two Democratic senator one would think were vulnerable – Manchin and Simena – and who were making noises about maybe not voting to remove, came right along with the rest. Their vulnerability is really much less than it seems, because both have terms (just like Romney) till January of 2025. So they’ll be just fine. And (unlike Mitt) they will be rewarded by their leaders for their loyalty.

The only truly vulnerable Democrat who voted to remove Trump is Doug Jones of Alabama, who must run again this year. My guess is that he thought he didn’t have much of a chance before today, anyway, so he had little to lose.

By the way, there’s a Utah bill that was proposed just a few days ago, providing for the recall of senators. The bill’s sponsor says it wasn’t about Romney and impeachment, because it was in the works long before that. At any rate, it may face a constitutional challenge because recall votes are ordinarily only for state offices, if they are allowed at all.

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Well, well, well. Mitt Romney is going to vote to convict Trump:

In a stunning break with his party, Romney became the first Republican to say that he would find Trump guilty of an impeachment charge, with his remarks coming just hours before the Senate was set to vote.

“The grave question the Constitution tasks senators to answer is whether the president committed an act so extreme and egregious that it rises to the level of a high crime and misdemeanor. Yes, he did,” Romney said in remarks on the Senate floor.

Not a single GOP senator was in attendance for Romney’s somber remarks…

I wonder if there’s a single person (except the left and NeverTrumpers, of course) who will see Romney’s vote as anything other than pure revenge and an attention-getting device. Ah, how the left will love him and laud him as the only Republican patriot and hero!

That seems to be the attention he craves. Obviously Romney doesn’t care about being re-elected. My guess is that this sort of opportunity was the main reason he decided to run for the Senate from a safely red state – to hurt Trump. Senators serve for 6 years, so the state of Utah is stuck with him for a while, and so are we. He’s going to be there till 2024. I don’t think there’s any way to recall a senator, either.

Very very sad, I think.

[NOTE: I see that Schiff says Romney is displaying “moral courage.” Coming from Schiff, that’s rather humorous.]

The post Romney will vote to convict Trump appeared first on The New Neo.

The Democrats believe they can pretend otherwise. The reason is quite simple: they want to say it doesn’t count and Trump is still guilty, as “proven” in their own investigation and witness-questioning that followed none, and I mean none, of the protective rules involved in a trial. They want to pick and choose what parts of a trial they require Republicans to follow in the Senate, and what parts Democrats can ignore in the House (and the Senate, too, if the Democrats ever got a chance to interrogate witnesses there, too).

This serves to set up the Democrats’ continual, perpetual bleat of “he’s guilty forever, he will never be unimpeached” – although in accomplishing this supposed feat the Democrats violated the due process they insist that Republicans must follow in the Senate “trial” portion of the proceedings.

The post “It wasn’t a real trial so it’s illegitimate and Trump is still guilty”… appeared first on The New Neo.

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.

The post No witnesses appeared first on The New Neo.

“It’s very important whether or not a group of Democratic activists, part of the Obama-Biden administration were working together for years looking for an opportunity to impeach the president,” Paul explained. He blamed Roberts and the Senate for “selective belief in protecting the whistleblower statute … nobody says they know who the person is. But anybody you say might be all of a sudden is protected from being part of the debate.”

Roberts communicated to senators on Tuesday that he would not read questions that outed the alleged whistleblower, prompting Paul to complain afterward.

Everyone who follows the news at all closely knows the whistleblower’s supposed identity: Eric Ciaramella. It’s not any kind of secret at all. And Rand Paul has said that was the person named in his question.

What a stupid charade – but it’s one that plays quite nicely into Schiff’s hands.

And by the way, it would be different if this was a whistleblower whose identity is protected by statute. It is not.

The post By refusing to read the name of the whistleblower during the impeachment trial… appeared first on The New Neo.

Usually these rumors come to nothing, though, and it’s the Republicans who defect while the Democrats stick together. But one never knows. This is an unusual situation, and these Democrats know that the public has tired of this mess.

I certainly know that I’ve tired of this mess. But what’s happening is both repulsive and important.

If you want to follow more closely, you can watch it live here:

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But it’s not at all clear to me that the Democrats will win much if anything by pressing for more witnesses and calling Bolton. Yes, the Democrats’ plan is most definitely to “Kavanaugh” the proceedings. But how did that work out on the end for the Democrats? Yes, it may yield some further grist for the Democrats’ mills. But I doubt it will deflect a single one of Trump’s supporters, and it will open the door for the GOP to call more witnesses, too. That might lead to the GOP’s own bombshells.

After all, we know a lot about what the Democrats’ witnesses might say. Some of it actually exonerates the president. We don’t know what Hunter Biden or the-whistleblower-who-must-not-be-named would say, and it could definitely open up several cans of worms for the Democrats. When last I checked, it’s McConnell who’s in control of who to call if the majority votes to call more witnesses. And even Mitt Romney has now come out in favor of the Republicans getting some witnesses of their own:

Sen. Mitt Romney, a Republican from Utah who wants former national security adviser John Bolton to testify in the president’s impeachment trial, said he supports Republican witnesses being called too.

When the Washington Examiner asked on Tuesday if former Vice President Joe Biden and his son Hunter should be called as well, Romney responded, “I think if you heard from one side, you probably ought to have the chance to hear from a witness from the other side.”…

Sen. Lindsey Graham, a Republican from South Carolina, told reporters Tuesday he is confident that 51 votes exist in the conference to call witnesses on the GOP list if necessary.

“I’ll make a prediction. There’ll be 51 Republican votes to call Hunter Biden, Joe Biden, the whistleblower, and the DNC staffer [Alexandra Chalupa],” he said.

Senate Republicans said Monday that any deal to call for witnesses will include Hunter Biden.

“If we need to hear from more people, it’s going to be a group of individuals,” said Sen. John Barrasso, a Republican from Wyoming, on Monday.

This entire push could boomerang and hit the Democrats squarely in the face.

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