Ira Lacher: “Acting alone in a partisan snit fit can’t cut it.” -promoted by Laura Belin
U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced on December 5 that the House Judiciary Committee will draft articles of impeachment against President Donald J. Trump. Want to bet that no Republican will vote for them?
In all likelihood, the articles will focus entirely on Trump abusing the power of the presidency to make a foreign leader do oppo research on his likely election opponent as a condition for releasing hundreds of millions of dollars in military aid that was approved by a coequal branch of government.
But you know what? Most Americans do not believe that this is an impeachable offense and it wouldn’t be wrong to change the motto on the greenback from “e pluribus unum” to “quid pro quo.” Long before the election of 2016, three-fourths of Americans believed that our government is corrupt, that the needs of the privileged few outweigh the needs of the many.
That’s why 63 million people voted for Donald Trump in the first place. They perceived him as a gritty, gutty street fighter who made a lot of money by not being afraid to challenge the way things were done. They heard him say he was going to bring good-paying jobs back to where they had disappeared, make our borders safe from hordes of swarthy-looking terrorists, make China pay mightily for stealing our inventions, and give everyone better health coverage than offered through the Affordable Care Act.
Today, we know that Trump has only been re-enacting the scene from Animal House when the freshman Flounder, his brother’s luxury car bashed in from a fraternity misadventure, hears Otter, the frat president, telling him the facts of life: “You f***ed up — you trusted us.” But the Democrats have not pursued the case that loutish, insincere, insecure, uninformed, bigoted, bullying, profiteering, un-American behavior is a high crime or misdemeanor.
Which they should. Trump has torched every benchmark that made the presidency one of the most distinguished and admired elected offices in the history of the world. Whether it’s calling sovereign nations “shithole countries,” praising neo-Nazis, kowtowing to dictators, bragging about groping women, and locking children in cages, this sorry specimen has made the presidency an embarrassment to everyone who is not a Republican. This includes NATO leaders, who were caught on video mocking the buffoon in chief.
Look, I know the feds couldn’t get Al Capone for being a racketeer, bootlegger and murderer so they got him for tax evasion. Had Richard Nixon not resigned the presidency, Democrats and Republicans would have united to remove him for offering hush money to criminals and covering it up. But acting alone in a partisan snit fit can’t cut it. Republicans failed to remove President Bill Clinton for lying to Congress about having an affair in the White House. And Democrats won’t get Trump for doing what most Americans believe has gone on in the corrupt halls of government, near and far, for time immemorial.
So, I agree with George Washington University Professor Jonathan Turley, who testified on December4 to the Judiciary Committee, “We’re are all mad, and where has it taken us? Will a slipshod impeachment make us less mad? Will it only give an invitation for the madness to follow in every future administration? This is not how you impeach an American president.”
What you impeach an American president for is for defecating on the office. If Democrats and Republicans are too chicken to do it, then it’s our duty to make it happen on November 3, 2020.
Top image: Photograph by “Coffeeandcrumbs” of the open Hearing with Dr. Fiona Hill and David Holmes, November 21, 2019, via Wikimedia Commons.