“Sadly, but with confidence and humility, with allegiance to our founders, and a heart full of love for America, today I am asking our chairman to proceed with articles of impeachment.” Thus spake Nancy Pelosi from the Speaker’s Balcony in the Capitol on Thursday.
“The president’s actions have seriously violated the Constitution, especially when he says and acts upon the belief, Article II says I can do whatever I want,” the San Francisco Democrat added. “No, his wrongdoing strikes at the very heart of our Constitution, a separation of powers, three co-equal branches, each a check and balance on the other.”
As San Francisco Democrat Nancy Pelosi sees it, “Our democracy is what is at stake. The president leaves us no choice but to act, because he is trying to corrupt, once again, the election for his own benefit. The president has engaged in abuse of power, undermining our national security and jeopardizing the integrity of our elections.”
Pelosi’s announcement follows a day of testimony from Democrats’ trio of anti-Trump attorneys: Noah Feldman of Harvard Law school, Michael Gerhardt of North Carolina University School of Law, and Pamela Karlan of Stanford Law School. Their testimony was, in effect, a mini-Mueller surge with only three angry Democrats. The sulfuric Karlan, a major donor to Elizabeth Warren, even went after President Trump’s son Barron, only 13 years of age.
The Republicans only selection was Jonathan Turley of George Washington University Law School. Turley voted for Hillary Clinton in 2016 but saw no grounds for impeachment of President Trump. The always understated professor warned Democrats that if they move to impeach, “it’s your abuse of power.” Even so, Pelosi made the move Thursday, but telegraphed it earlier in the week from a United Nations climate conference in Spain.
“By coming here, we want to say to everyone we are still are still in, the United States is still in,” Pelosi said. What the United States was “still in,” was the climate accord from which President Trump had withdrawn. Pelosi’s presumption to speak for the United States foreshadowed her contention on Thursday that Trump was “once again” trying to corrupt the election. That restated the Democrat belief that Trump is an illegitimate president who stole the 2016 election and should therefore be removed from office. That is the flywheel of what has been going on for the past three years.
Before Pelosi made the call on Thursday, President Trump said the Democrats “have gone crazy.” If they were going to impeach, the president tweeted, “do it now, fast, so we can have a fair trial in the Senate, and so that our country can get back to business.” For all but the willfully blind, what happened Wednesday was anything but fair.
“There must never be a narrowly voted impeachment or an impeachment substantially supported by one of our major political parties and largely opposed by the other. Such an impeachment would lack legitimacy, would produce divisiveness and bitterness in our politics for years to come and will call into question the very legitimacy of our political institutions.” That was Rep. Jerrold Nadler back in 1998, when President Clinton was on the hot seat. More than 20 years later, as Judiciary Committee boss, Nadler deploys three Democrat picks against one by the Republicans.
None of the anti-Trump lawyers was a fact witness and the three loudly opined that without impeachment, the nation had become a dictatorship or monarchy. The Founding Fathers, normally attacked as pioneers of white supremacy, were now worshipfully invoked in the Democrats impeachment surge. On the other hand, Jonathan Turley said in his statement, “divining the intent of the Framers often borders on necromancy, with about the same level of reliability.”
On Fox News Tucker Carlson called Karlan a “moron” who “needs a shrink,” but despite evidence that might be too simple. The Democrats have evidently confused academic credentials with wisdom. The same was true for the anti-Trump diplomats in Adam Schiff’s show trial. All were smart people but as Saul Bellow said, a great deal of intelligence can be invested in ignorance when the need for illusion is deep.
The need for illusion might be most apparent in Nancy Pelosi, whose heroes are Stalinists like Peter Seeger, invoked on Thanksgiving, along with Communist and Soviet agent Harry Bridges. Pelosi is also a fan of the Communist-backed 1952 “progressive” candidate Vincent Hallinan and Tom Hayden, a champion of North Vietnam’s Communist dictatorship.
Like the squads of anti-Trump lawyers and diplomats, Pelosi advances no evidence that President Trump committed a crime. Like Schiff and Nadler, the fact-proof Nancy Pelosi lives under the dictatorship of the subjunctive mood, and her leadership style brooks little if any opposition.
In the run-up to Christmas, Nancy Pelosi has deployed the Impeachment Santa. Articles of impeachment will be drafted and Democrats will have to show where they stand on the impeachment of the man Jonathan Turley, a Democrat, describes as the “duly elected president of the United States.”
Nancy Pelosi made her list and checked it more than twice, but will Santa give her Democrats everything they want? Will it get to the Senate and is it dead on arrival? How will Mitch McConnell handle it, and what will Mitt Romney do?
Will the American people get to see the mysterious “whistleblower,” and will Adam “paradigm” Schiff testify under oath at long last? And how will voters respond next November? As President Trump likes to say, we’ll have to see what happens.
* * *
Leave a Reply