News that I missed, courtesy of The Babylon Bee:
Impeachment can be confusing. But The Babylon Bee is here with an explainer so you will know how the process works and what it takes for Dems to snap their fingers together and make Trump disappear in a cloud of dust.
What is impeachment?
It’s the official, constitutional method for screaming at the sky because Trump is president.
Why is Trump being impeached?
Trump has committed some very serious offenses, from not being a Democrat to being a Republican. He also won the 2016 election, which rises to the level of high crimes and misdemeanors. He also restored the celebration of Christmas after eight years of winter with no Christmas under Obama. This drove Dems up a wall so they drummed up some charges against him.
Why didn’t Democrats include any criminal offenses in the articles of impeachment?
There were just so many of them, it was hard to pick one. So, instead of laying out actually impeachable offenses, the Democrats summarized it all with two main articles of impeachment: 1.) Trump is president. 2.) TRUMP IS PRESIDENT.
What does it take to remove the president from office?
Faith, trust, and pixie dust.
Will Trump be removed from office?
Lol.
If we believe in ourselves and try hard, and Trump is removed, Hillary Clinton becomes president, right?
Actually, Mike Pence would become president, basically making the United States into a Handmaid’s Tale-style dystopia.
What happens if Trump is impeached in the House but acquitted in the Senate?
Democrats don’t get the big prize, but they each get a complimentary copy of Impeachment: The Board Game.
Go here to read the rest. Presidential Impeachments in the US have a curious similarity. All three of them have been allegedly about matters they weren’t about. The pretext for the impeachment of Andrew Johnson over a violation of the Tenure of Office Act which sought to prevent Johnson from dismissing Secretary of War Stanton. (The Act was pealed back by Congress in 1869 and repealed by Congress in 1887. In 1826 the US Supreme Court found a similar act to be an unconstitutional infringement on the powers of the President.) The actual reason was that Johnson, a Democrat, opposed the Reconstruction of the Republican majority and rendered himself obnoxious to almost all Republicans by his violent attacks on the Republican majority in Congress in speeches.
Bill Clinton was ostensibly impeached for committing perjury in the Paula Jones civil law suit. He was actually impeached because the Republican majority in Congress opposed most of his policies and he had rendered himself obnoxious to most Republicans in the country with his lurid personal behavior.
Donald Trump ostensibly is being impeached because he asked the Ukrainian President to reopen the Bursima investigation in order to nail Hunter Biden and Joe Biden. The actual reason is that Trump has been viewed as somehow an illegitimate President since election day 2016, and when they regained the House in 2018 the Democrats were going to impeach him, come what may.
Political disputes are thus transformed into impeachment efforts, with the public, in the main, looking with disfavor on the process.
The Nixon impeachment effort was the exception to this rule. There was enough wrong-doing by the Nixon administration, although not much different from similar activities under Democrat administrations, that his support collapsed among Republicans in Congress, and Nixon resigned prior to impeachment. The fact that the media was limited to organs opposed to Nixon, and the inability of Nixon to summon the energy to mount a vigorous defense, illustrate how different that process was from today.
When Trump is acquitted by the Senate, this impeachment effort will closely resemble all Presidential impeachments except that of Nixon.
The Nixon impeachment effort was the exception to this rule.
Not really, according to Nixon staffer Geoff Shepard, whom I find persuasive.
Worth noting:
So the Nixon investigation fits the same overall pattern. And I suspect Trump’s support in the Senate would collapse just as quickly as Nixon’s, were the Democrats to succeed in manufacturing a new “smoking gun.”
But that’s only because collapsing under pressure is what Republican politicians do.
Depends. GOP senators care about one thing over everything else – continuing to be a senator. If supporting Trump increases their chance of remaining in the senate, they will support him, just as Nixon’s support vanished because it appeared supporting him would reduce the chance of retaining a senate seat. Nothing else matters.
If the Republicans in the Senate frame the political calculus in the way you’ve presented it, that means they’ve failed to learn the lesson of Watergate. Unlike their Democrat colleagues, who demonstrated that they had mastered the lesson.
Impeachment History in brief.
A Brief History of Impeachment [from a 1964, high school American History textbook, i.e., ante Nixon/Watergate and Clinton]
Early in 1804, the House of Representatives voted impeachment charges against (arrogant, unpopular) Supreme Court Justice Samuel Chase. The evidence proved Chase was guilty of bad manners, injudicious statements, and unrestrained partisanship, but not “high crimes and misdemeanors.” The Senate failed to convict. Since 1804, there has been no other partisan attempt to reduce or reshape the Supreme Court using impeachment power.
May 1868, the House of Representatives/Radical Republicans voted Impeachment for Andrew Johnson. Johnson was guilty of bad judgment, bad speeches, bad temper and wantonly opposing a radical reconstruction agenda but not high crimes and misdemeanors. The Senate failed to convict Andrew Johnson.
If a hostile two-thirds majority in Congress can remove the President, there is a breakdown of Constitutional separation of powers. If Congress can oust the Presidency, and the Supreme Court, they could establish a kind of legislative dictatorship.
See The American Pageant, A History of the Republic by Thomas A. Bailey pages 186, 479-80.
“Unlike their Democrat colleagues, who demonstrated that they had mastered the lesson.”
How so considering the impeachment effort of the Democrats is growing more unpopular with each passing day?
An interesting pattern began with Richard Nixon: Each and every time in modern history that a lame-duck president has been faced by a totally hostile Congress
It wasn’t totally hostile. The Republicans gained 12 seats in the House and the division was 242 to 192. Many of the Democrats were true moderates and even conservatives. The Democrat House didn’t start its left trajectory until the Watergate Babies came in with the election of 1974. Nixon at the beginning of Watergate faced a much less hostile House than Trump has faced since 2018.
Reagan and Iran/Contra had zip impact in 1988. The Whitewater scandal started in Clinton’s first term and had zip impact on the 1996 Presidential race and zip impact on the 2000 Presidential race. Valerie Plame had little to do with the Democrat victory in the White House race for 2008, which pivoted around the economic melt down, war-weariness, the usual turn over of the White House after eight years to the opposing party and McCain being the weakest major party candidate since Carter in 80.
How so?
That’s the House, not the Senate. And it’s a older lesson than that of Watergate that, in their zealous hatred for Trump, it would seem they have forgotten.
It wasn’t totally hostile. It was by ’73. And as the article shows, Cox and co. were as anti-Nixon as Mueller and co. were anti-Trump.
As for the rest, I think Shepard’s point is more that a partisan split between the Executive and Legislative branches results in the continuation of politics by other means (lawfare) as the party out of Executive power seeks to reclaim it, while also bolstering their own power over the Legislative branch. Or in other words, both parties have been attempting to whelp a new batch of Watergate babies.
Or maybe I’m just inclined to agree with him because I think the Stupid Party lived up to it’s name with the 22 Amendment. They should have limited a President to 3 terms in office, not 2.
That’s the House, not the Senate.
The Senate split was 56 Democrats to 42 Republicans. Many of the Democrat Senators were from the South and had no reason to be hostile to Nixon for political purpose.
It was by ’73
No it wasn’t. There was a reason why Nixon continually bled Republican support while the Republicans have held firm for Trump. Nixon’s henchmen were committing felonies, and Nixon made it worse with his idiotic coverup.
As to your larger point, this couldn’t be going better for Trump if Pelosi were on the take from him. This centers attention on Trump, something he loves, takes attention away from Democrat candidates, destroys Biden, rallies conservatives to Trump, and Trump is reaping a fundraising Bonanza. As a political strategy, this is working as well for the Democrats as Satan’s attempt in Heaven to start a rebellion.
Either that was a typo, or Trump has been playing us all for far longer than we realize. No wonder he’s so good at this game!
Thanks for catching that Nate. It has been a long day in the Law Mines!
All citizens, sovereign persons, are constituents of the president, all presidents. All American citizens are constituents of the president. While being the constituents of their particular representatives in Congress, the American individual has a very real, firm and personal relationship with the president over and above the right to vote for the president. When the president speaks, as did George Washington and Abraham Lincoln, the president speaks for all of his constituents without party lines or bias or secret agendas…government of the people, for the people and by the people is a reality.
Obama never spoke for the American people; “We, the people…” Obama went to Paris with his phone and his pen as a single individual citizen with one VOTE. Obama could not cast a vote for the American people because Obama did not believe in, nor represent the American sovereign person. Obama had his own agenda…power.
Trump has restored the American person’s civil right to relate to “their Creator” in public and private. Trump has restored the American person’s possession of America in joint and common tenancy, the American Flag, all free lands and waterways so coveted by Clinton and Obama, SEE: Obama’s Executive Order 13575 Rural Councils through which Obama could seize private farmland. Even our Statue of Liberty was almost forfeited to the United Nations by Bill, the one world government agent, Clinton.
The reality that President Trump has done more for his constituents, every American person, than any and all Democrats and very many Republicans cannot be dismissed by the impeachment process without dismissing all and each and every American citizen by the cabal of power hungry violators who trample on our civil rights, our acknowledgement of our sovereignty and of our patriotism by the obliteration of our constituency through President Trump.. This obliteration of “We, the people….”, who “We” are and how “We” must be served must be stopped.
All American citizens are constituents of President Donald J. Trump. While impeaching President Donald Trump, the Democrats have unwittingly impeached themselves.
Impeach Obama and Clinton for crimes against their constituents
Impeachment proceeding must be started against Obama for trying to take our private farms through Executive Order 13575 Rural Councils and the Cliven Bundy fiasco leaving the government as the culprit; among his crimes of malfeasance in office, prohibiting the Catholic Mass and the Last Rites to military men on Military bases during the government shutdown, violating “or prohibit the free exercise thereof” even as our tax dollars pay for our military bases and for decimating our constitutional Posterity. Yes Obama. Tax money belongs to the tax payers even as our tax money is administered by the administration. Yes, Obama, we did build that. That is called swindling your constituents.
Impeachment proceedings must be started against Bill Clinton as his executive order took all of our free lands and waterways, owned in joint and common tenancy, by each and every citizen who institutes our sovereign nation and nationalized them under the authority of the Chief Executive…himself. That is called stealing from your constituents.
Every Senator and Representative who does not know or refuses to serve his constituents must be recalled, removed.
The Democrats have awakened a sleeping giant. The fakes, the frauds, the imposters can ride their unicorns out to never never land.
Not one thin dime, not one penny, not one mill, not one tenth of a mill for abortion.
and I promise you: I will not commit suicide as did Vince Foster