The Raving Congress

In their first day controlling Congress, the Democrats behaved as I had expected, unfortunately.

Speaker Pelosi is now in the unenviable position of being Donald Trump’s protector against impeachment by the more deranged members of her party who were elected specifically to impeach him. I don’t know how she’s going to manage it for the next two years. That, and many of the other radical ideas that the majority will demand.

The moderate vs progressive fight in the House is going to be as dazzling as the RINO vs MAGA one that’s been raging for three years now. And Pelosi is in the middle of it.

With regard to all of the uproar over Tlaib saying “impeach the motherfucker”, I don’t think the problem is that she called Trump a bad word. No, it wouldn’t have been acceptable in the past, but Trump says plenty that no previous president would have. I think this is the correct view of the whole matter:

That’s what it’s all about. Progressives seem to have been emotionally frozen in November 2016 and they can’t move past it. There’s still this angry and downright infantile belief that Donald Trump’s election can somehow be undone and that anything will be better by forcibly removing him from office rather than defeating him in 2020.

It’s why I say that the Democrats should not have been given control back of even one chamber of Congress. They don’t deserve it. Now we get two years of the House Democrats behaving like the Senate Democrats during the Kavanaugh confirmation. Every day.

What Tlaib said is just voicing how a lot of mad people feel, but it’s terrible for her cause that she said it out loud. Americans largely sympathized with Bill Clinton and he survived impeachment because most didn’t think he really committed a crime that was worthy of impeachment. They had gone through years of the GOP endlessly investigating him and were never convinced that the reason for his impeachment was anything but political.

Tlaib has done the same for Donald Trump. She’s confirming what we on the Right already know. It doesn’t matter what supposed laws Trump broke. The Resistance wants a coup and is going to have it at all costs.

Do I think Donald Trump committed an impeachable offense? Yes, if history is a guide. Andrew Johnson, the first president to be impeached, had as one of the articles of impeachment lodged against him that he had attacked Congress in a series of speeches. Using that as a precedent, the House could offer up dozens of Trump’s tweets as evidence in those proceedings, if criticizing the other branches of government is a reason to to try a president.

The House can impeach a president for whatever reason the majority wants to. That does not mean that Donald Trump should be removed from office. It will be disastrous if it is done only for shortsighted political butthurt instead of for serving the Constitution or any idea of justice.

The House Democrats who took over the majority in 2006–led by Pelosi–wisely understood this and didn’t avenge Bill Clinton by impeaching Bush over the objections of many in their party. They knew better and knew what it would lead to.

Anyway, I don’t think the House will impeach Trump no matter what. Mueller isn’t going to give them what they need and even if he did, his investigation is tainted beyond repair. I think the Trump Foundation and campaign finance violations might have more legs, but they are related to things that happened prior to Trump becoming president.

The Democrats, in my opinion, have less than six months to impeach Trump. At that point, the primary campaigns for choosing which candidate will lose to Trump in 2020 begins. I don’t think they’ll be dumb enough to try to interfere in the election with a politically-motivated impeachment.

They could, I suppose. Maybe start symbolically trying to impeach Trump the way the House GOP spent years ritualistically repealing Obamacare. Where did they get with that anyway?

No, I wouldn’t bet on it.

Open thread. Can we please talk about anything other than that socialist idiot backbencher’s dancing video?