Posted on 12/19/2019 12:17:43 PM PST by Kaslin
RUSH: Let’s reiterate here. You know, try to make the complex understandable. Trump is being impeached for what?
It isn’t about the Ukraine phone call. It’s not about interfering in the election in 2020 and all of that. They can’t let go of what they thought 2016 was gonna produce. They are still locked in on that. They’re still focusing on it, still hoping that the allegation that Trump’s 2016 election was illegitimate. And what has Trump done?
All Trump has done is ask questions. One of the questions was of the president of Ukraine. Trump is asking questions. He’s got investigations going, trying to find out what happened to him. Who did this to him? Who did this to his voters? Who’s in the process of trying to disenfranchise his voters. He’s simply asking questions. He’s being impeached for trying to get answers.
The United States government — and by that I mean the administrative state — has literally lied to the people of this country for three years and counting now about Russia collusion. They’ve been trying to put Donald Trump in jail, not just reverse the election results. They have been trying to get Donald Trump in jail. Their problem is, he has been completely exonerated and vindicated by their own investigative body, the Mueller report.
This is basic human nature. So Trump is pursued, he’s lied about, he’s libeled, he’s slandered for three years. Then he is completely exonerated and vindicated, so what does he do? He starts asking questions about what the hell happened? He starts asking questions. He wants answers about how in the hell this happened. And he’s talking to the president of Ukraine, and he’s asking him to help come up with some of these answers.
And now the same people that set Donald Trump up, the same people that lied about him and tried to put him in jail are now impeaching him for defending himself. They’re the ones who behaved illegally. They are the ones who threatened the Constitution. They are the ones who have stood everything decent upside down.
Trump is simply asking questions about them, who they are, what they did. All he’s doing is defending himself. He’s being impeached for defending himself, pure and simple. Because in today’s Democrat world you are not permitted to defend yourself. You take the allegation and you deal with it.
Let’s go to Mitch McConnell and the sound bites. We’re gonna start here. This is in order at number 1. Pelosi was scorched today by the Turtle. It may not sound like it in every utterance because the Turtle is the Turtle, but he blew her up in this 30 minute speech on the Senate floor. Here’s the first sample.
MCCONNELL: Speaker Pelosi’s House just gave in to a temptation that every other House in our history has managed to resist. They impeach a president whom they do not even allege has committed an actual crime known to our laws. They’ve impeached simply because they disagree with a presidential act and question the motive behind it. There were powerful reasons, Mr. President, why Congress after Congress for 230 years — 230 years — required presidential impeachment to revolve around clear, recognizable crimes, even though that was not a strict limitation. Powerful reasons why for 230 years no House, no House opened the Pandora’s box of subjective political impeachments. That 230-year tradition died last night.
RUSH: He continued.
MCCONNELL: Speaker Pelosi suggested that House Democrats may be too afraid, too afraid to even transmit their shoddy work product to the Senate. Mr. President, looks like the prosecutors are getting cold feet. They said impeachment was so urgent that it could not even wait for due process, but now they’re content to sit on their hands.
Sen. Mitch McConnell slams Dem impeachment on Senate floor
RUSH: The next bite is one that resonated with me because I think in this bite I will be able to indicate, I’ll be able to illustrate for you a prediction I made yesterday, that maybe not in our lifetimes, but at some point down the road the Democrats realizing the one thing in our political system they don’t control, that stands in their way, is elections. And at some point, folks, it’s gonna happen.
Some Democrat somewhere, someday is gonna come along and suggest that elections are old-fashioned, outmoded, outdated — and they’ll have all kinds of reasons. It’ll be because people are uneducated. People don’t know what they’re talking about. The people are too stupid, or we can’t trust them to do the right. It will be something along those lines, but it’s gonna be because Democrats keep losing, and in this bite, I might be able to extract… Not evidence of that.
But it’s an indication that that’s how the Democrats are thinking. Here is McConnell suggesting that he’s not gonna let “thirdhand testimony from unelected” bureaucrats, i.e., Lieutenant Colonel Vindman — O say can you see — and Yovanovitch and Fiona Hill and what’s his name, George Kent — the bow-tie guy — and Bill Taylor… He’s not gonna let testimony from unelected, thirdhand bureaucrats determine who is and who isn’t president.
MCCONNELL: President Trump is not the first president with a populist streak, not the first to make entrenched elites uncomfortable. He’s certainly not the first president to speak bluntly, to mistrust the administrative state, or to rankle unelected bureaucrats. None of these things — none of them — is unprecedented. I’ll tell you what would be unprecedented. It will be an unprecedented constitutional crisis if the Senate literally hands the House of Representatives a new partisan vote of no confidence. It will be unprecedented if we agree that any future House that dislikes any future president can rush through an unfair inquiry, skip the legal system, and paralyze the Senate with a trial. It will be unprecedented if the Senate says secondhand and thirdhand testimony from unelected civil servants is enough to overturn the people’s vote.
RUSH: Let me take a brief time-out. We’ll come back and I’ll explain some things about this bite when we get back.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: McConnell made the point that the Democrats over in the House requested extraordinary amounts of sensitive information from the Trump White House, exactly the kind of things over which presidents of both parties have asserted privilege in the past. It was predictable and appropriate for Trump to do this. He’s been impeached for it! This is what they’re calling “obstruction of Congress.” But it’s a never-ending quest for power that the branches fight with one another, that they have now criminalized in the form of impeachment.
McConnell made the point that none of what Trump has done here is unprecedented. In fact, it’s all happened before, and it’s common. Houses of Representatives have always wanted White House documents. Presidents have always said, “Go pound sand. If you want ’em, we gotta go to court.” The president’s gone to court claiming executive privilege. More often than not, the president prevails in court. This is exactly what the president did in these circumstances.
They’re calling this “obstruction of Congress” because they’re desperate to get the word “obstruction.” They want to use the word “cover-up.” They think it went well during Watergate. He says, “This is not a constitutional crisis. We’re nowhere near a constitutional crisis because this is normal!” None of this is unprecedented. The routine occurrence of separation of powers is nothing. What happened is what should have happened! It’s what always happens.
There’s nothing here that Trump has done that constitutes anything unconstitutional or illegal or obstructive. I mean, McConnell was on fire. But I want to go back to his specifically mentioning, “It would be unprecedented if the Senate says secondhand and thirdhand testimony from unelected civil servants is enough to overturn the people’s vote.” That is exactly what this has been about since the entire-Russian meddling-and-Trump-collusion fiasco began.
It has been about reversing the election result, as you well know.
Now, I contend to you that a party brazenly and openly attempting to reverse election results is a party that is entirely capable down the road of canceling elections, period. Now, don’t misunderstand me. I’m not suggesting that this is Pelosi’s objective now. I’m telling you, I’ve studied the trend line of the American left and where it’s headed my entire life, and particularly the last 30-some-odd years of this program, and they have trended so far to the left now that they are openly socialist and trending communist.
They even use the word “socialist” in many of their factions proudly to describe themselves. But make no mistake. They don’t like the results of this election, and they’re trying to reverse them — and look how they’re doing it. They’re bringing in so-called experts that are not elected to comment on the qualifications of the man who was elected, and they’re turning to these unelected bureaucrats that you never heard of before any of this happened, that you didn’t know of. You had no idea what they do, how good they are at it or not.
And now all of a sudden, their testimony is sufficient to produce an article of impeachment suggesting that this president — elected in an Electoral College near landslide — is unfit. McConnell’s exactly right. The basis on which this impeachment process is attempting to overturn the election results is the fact that the existing Washington establishment claims this man is not qualified, this man is unfit. They are exactly trying to overturn a duly constituted election by lying about it, but falsely accusing people who won it and participated in it.
What are they trying to do? They’re trying to deny the election result. They’re trying to deny the choice and the will of the American people. We’re not far from it. We’re not far from the day — and, believe me, they’re already thinking about it. I will as close to guarantee it as I can without having actually heard them talk about it. But I will wager you that they, among themselves, have had conversations about the problems they face just having to do elections.
That they resent having to go through this whole thing, this whole process of elections. If they could ever find a way to eliminate them, not… They would replace them with something. I mean, they’d try to make it palatable to the American people. It’s who they are. They are attempting to do it right now.
They have been for three years. They’re not going to stop. This entire next year is going to be based and predicated on “Trump’s unqualified.” Now they’ve got the blemish: Impeachment. That will be part of the 2020 campaign. The last thing… The one thing that Pelosi will not permit is Trump being acquitted. Ergo, there won’t be a Senate trial unless, somehow, she’s convinced there’s gonna be a conviction.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: One of the ways they could try to replace elections is do it with polls. Think of how they use exit polls today. Those involve elections, but the signs are all there.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: One more Mitch McConnell sound bite. It’s number 4. Now, this is a favorite topic of Senator McConnell’s. When I first met him — and I don’t remember when that was — he gave me a lesson on what the purpose of the Senate is, as designed by the founders, and he touches on it in this bite.
MCCONNELL: The framers built the Senate to provide stability, to take the long view of our republic, to safeguard institutions from the momentary hysteria that sometimes consumes our politics, to keep partisan passions from literally boiling over. The Senate exists for moments like this. There’s only one outcome that is suited to the paucity of evidence, the failed inquiry, the slapdash case — only one outcome suited to the fact that the accusations themselves are constitutionally incoherent. Constitutionally incoherent.
Only one outcome will preserve core precedents rather than smash them into bits in a fit of partisan rage because one party still cannot accept the American people’s choice in 2016. It could not be clearer which outcome would serve the stabilizing, institution-preserving, fever-breaking role for which the United States Senate was created, and which outcome would betray it. The Senate’s duty is clear. When the time comes, we must fulfill it.
RUSH: Now, the way he described it to me when I first met him is he said, “Rush, I want you token of the Senate as a cup and saucer. Over in the House and all through the country rabid partisanship is the name of the game. Imagine that rabid partisanship is coffee that is poured into the cup, and that partisanship sometimes boils over. It gets so rancorous and it gets so mean and it gets so heated; it just boils over, and where does it end up? It ends up in the saucer — and, Rush, the Senate is the saucer.
“The saucer is where what was in that cup boils over and ends up cooling down. It doesn’t get consumed. It sits there in the saucer and it just sort of cools down and sits there — and that, Rush, is the role of the Senate: To slow everything down, to take the partisanship out of it.” That’s what he’s talking about here. And he, in this case, has accurately described Pelosi and the House Democrats and what they have done. But I just have to comment because this was one of the best floor speeches in regards to this kind of partisanship in Washington that I’ve heard him give.
I mean, he referred to it as the most unfair impeachment inquiry in modern history. He ripped Pelosi for delaying all this, said the Democrats are afraid to transmit shoddy articles. What it is, just to refresh your memory or if you missed the first hour… What all of this is, is Pelosi knows she’s not gonna get a conviction in the Senate so not gonna send ’em over there. This is, again, the thing about this that had everybody puzzled.
All of these official commentators, official analysts on cable TV and in the newspapers and the blogs and the websites asked, “Why is she doing this? It’s gonna lead to an acquittal. It’s the exact opposite of what she wants.” Not if she doesn’t send the articles over. If there isn’t a trial, there can’t be an acquittal. And what she’s basically saying is she’s not going to assign any House managers, any prosecutors until she gets an idea of “the arena.”
What she means by that, she’s not gonna send them over there until she can be assured that they’re gonna convict and remove Trump from office. Otherwise they’re not gonna be sent over. Which makes total, perfect sense. They want the blemish. They don’t want the news stories, “Donald Trump impeached in December of 2019 and acquitted in January of 2020.”
They don’t want that. They don’t want anything other than Donald Trump impeached in December 19th and removed from office in January 2020. That’s what they want. If they don’t get that, she’s not gonna send ’em over there. The absolute worst thing that could happen is for this reprobate, in their minds, this existential threat to the country, this guy that colluded and stole the election has to be thrown out, to have all of this be thrown at him, and he ends up being acquitted in an election year? Ain’t no way. Ain’t gonna happen.
And her out is going to be claiming the Republicans are unfair because they’re partisan. They’re racist, sexist, bigot, homophobes, whatever else she wants to throw into the pile as her justification for not moving forward. (imitating Pelosi) “It won’t be a fair trial. I’ve heard Senator McConnell already say that he’s going to acquit. I can’t do this. I can’t conduct this if it’s not going to be a fair trial.” Well, there hasn’t been anything about this from the get-go that’s been fair. But that’s her out.
These are all steps in her march to assume the Presidency - for life is she could.
+1000
Mitch should announce a start date for the trial, get the chief justice locked in and notify Nancy she has 12 days to announce the managers.
God I hope not!
After the House of Representatives passed two partisan articles of impeachment, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell rises to deliver a speech from the upper chamber of congress.
Last night, House Democrats passed the thinnest, weakest presidential impeachment in American history. Now they’re suggesting they are too afraid to even submit their accusations to the Senate and go to trial. The prosecutors are getting cold feet in front of the entire country. ~ Mitch McConnell
[Transcript] – Last night House Democrats finally did what they decided to do long ago: They voted to impeach President Trump.
‘Over the last 12 weeks, House Democrats have conducted the most rushed, least thorough, and most unfair impeachment inquiry in modern history.
‘Now their slapdash process has concluded in the first purely partisan presidential impeachment since the wake of the Civil War. The opposition to impeachment was bipartisan. Only one part of one faction wanted this outcome.
‘The House’s conduct risks deeply damaging the institutions of American government. This particular House of Representatives has let its partisan rage at this particular President create a toxic new precedent that will echo into the future.
‘That’s what I want to discuss now: The historic degree to which House Democrats have failed to do their duty — and what it will mean for the Senate to do ours.
‘Let’s start at the beginning. Let’s start with the fact that Washington Democrats made up their minds to impeach President Trump since before he was even inaugurated
‘Here’s a reporter in April 2016. Quote, “Donald Trump isn’t even the Republican nominee yet… [but] ‘Impeachment’ is already on the lips of pundits, newspaper editorials, constitutional scholars, and even a few members of Congress.”
‘On Inauguration Day 2017, this headline in the Washington Post: “The campaign to impeach President Trump has begun.” That was day one.
‘In April 2017, three months into the presidency, a senior House Democrat said “I’m going to fight every day until he’s impeached.” That was three months in.
‘In December 2017, two years ago, Congressman Jerry Nadler was openly campaigning to be ranking member on House Judiciary specifically because he was an expert on impeachment.
‘This week wasn’t even the first time House Democrats have introduced articles of impeachment. It was the seventh time.
‘They started less than six months after the president was sworn in.
‘They tried to impeach President Trump for being impolite to the press… For being mean to professional athletes… For changing President Obama’s policy on transgender people in the military.
‘All of these things were “high crimes and misdemeanors” according to Democrats.
‘This wasn’t just a few people. Scores of Democrats voted to move forward with impeachment on three of those prior occasions.
‘So let’s be clear. The House’s vote yesterday was not some neutral judgment that Democrats came to reluctantly. It was the pre-determined end of a partisan crusade that began before President Trump was even nominated, let alone sworn in.
‘For the very first time in modern history we have seen a political faction in Congress promise from the moment a presidential election ended that they would find some way to overturn it.
‘A few months ago, Democrats’ three-year-long impeachment in search of articles found its way to the subject of Ukraine. And House Democrats embarked on the most rushed, least thorough, and most unfair impeachment inquiry in modern history.
‘Chairman Schiff’s inquiry was poisoned by partisanship from the outset. Its procedures and parameters were unfair in unprecedented ways.
‘Democrats tried to make Chairman Schiff into a de facto Special Prosecutor, notwithstanding the fact that he is a partisan member of Congress who’d already engaged in strange and biased behavior.
‘He scrapped precedent to cut the Republican minority out of the process. He denied President Trump the same sorts of procedural rights that Houses of both parties had provided to past presidents of both parties.
‘President Trump’s counsel could not participate in Chairman Schiff’s hearings, present evidence, or cross-examine witnesses.
‘The House Judiciary Committee’s crack at this was even more ahistorical. It was like the Speaker called up Chairman Nadler and ordered one impeachment, rush delivery please.
‘That Committee found no facts of its own and did nothing to verify the Schiff report. Their only witnesses were liberal law professors and congressional staffers.
‘There’s a reason the impeachment inquiry that led to President Nixon’s resignation required about 14 months of hearings. 14 months. In addition to a special prosecutor’s investigation.
‘With President Clinton, the independent counsel’s inquiry had been underway for years before the House Judiciary Committee dug in. Mountains of evidence. Mountains of testimony from firsthand fact witnesses. Serious legal battles to get what was necessary.
‘This time around, House Democrats skipped all of that and spent just 12 weeks.
‘More than a year of hearings for Nixon… multiple years of investigation for Clinton… and they’ve impeached President Trump in 12 weeks.
‘So let’s talk about what the House actually produced in those 12 weeks.
‘House Democrats’ rushed and rigged inquiry yielded two articles of impeachment. They are fundamentally unlike any articles that any prior House of Representatives has ever passed.
‘The first article concerns the core events which House Democrats claim are impeachable — the timing of aid to Ukraine.
‘But it does not even purport to allege any actual crime. Instead, they deploy this vague phrase, “abuse of power,” to impugn the president’s actions in a general, indeterminate way.
‘Speaker Pelosi’s House just gave into a temptation that every other House in history had managed to resist: They impeached a president whom they do not even allege has committed an actual crime known to our laws. They impeached simply because they disagree with a presidential act and question the motive behind it.
‘Look at history. The Andrew Johnson impeachment revolved around a clear violation of a criminal statute, albeit an unconstitutional one. Nixon had obstruction of justice — a felony under our laws. Clinton had perjury — also a felony.
‘Now, the Constitution does not say the House can impeach only those presidents who violate a law.
‘But history matters. Precedent matters. And there were important reasons why every previous House of Representatives in American history restrained itself from crossing this Rubicon.
‘The framers of our Constitution very specifically discussed whether the House should be able to impeach presidents just for “maladministration”— in other words, because the House simply thought the president had bad judgment or was doing a bad job.
‘The written records of the founders’ debates show they specifically rejected this. They realized it would create total dysfunction to set the bar for impeachment that low.
‘James Madison himself explained that allowing impeachment on that basis would mean the President serves at the pleasure of the Congress instead of the pleasure of the American people.
‘It would make the President a creature of Congress, not the head of a separate and equal branch. So there were powerful reasons why Congress after Congress for 230 years required presidential impeachments to revolve around clear, recognizable crimes, even though that was not a strict limitation.
‘Powerful reasons why, for 230 years, no House opened the Pandora’s box of subjective, political impeachments.
‘That 230-year tradition died last night.
‘Now, House Democrats have tried to say they had to impeach President Trump on this historically thin and subjective basis because the White House challenged their requests for more witnesses.
‘And that brings us to the second article of impeachment.
‘The House titled this one “obstruction of Congress.” What it really does is impeach the president for asserting presidential privilege.
‘The concept of executive privilege is another two-century-old constitutional tradition. Presidents starting with George Washington have invoked it. Federal courts have repeatedly affirmed it as a legitimate constitutional power.
‘House Democrats requested extraordinary amounts of sensitive information from President Trump’s White House — exactly the kinds of things over which presidents of both parties have asserted privilege in the past.
‘Predictably, and appropriately, President Trump did not simply roll over. He defended the constitutional authority of his office.
‘It is not a constitutional crisis for a House to want more information than a president wants to give up. It is a routine occurrence. The separation of powers is messy by design.
‘Here’s what should happen next: Either the President and Congress negotiate a settlement, or the third branch of government, the judiciary, addresses the dispute between the other two.
‘The Nixon impeachment featured disagreements over presidential privilege — so they went to the courts. The Clinton impeachment featured disagreements over presidential privilege — so they went to the courts.
‘This takes time. It’s inconvenient. That’s actually the point. Due process is not meant to maximize the convenience of the prosecutor. It is meant to protect the accused.
‘But this time was different. Remember: 14 months of hearings for Richard Nixon… years of investigation for Bill Clinton… but 12 weeks for President Trump.
‘Democrats didn’t have to rush this. But they chose to stick to their political timetable at the expense of pursuing more evidence through proper legal channels.
‘Nobody made Chairman Schiff do this. He chose to.
‘The Tuesday before last, on live television, Adam Schiff explained to the entire country that if House Democrats had let the justice system follow its normal course, they might not have gotten to impeach the president in time for the election!
‘In Nixon, the courts were allowed to do their work. In Clinton, the courts were allowed to do their work. Only these House Democrats decided due process is too much work and they’d rather impeach with no proof.
And, they tried to cover for their own partisan impatience by pretending that the routine occurrence of a president exerting constitutional privilege is itself a second impeachable offense.
The following is something that Adam Schiff literally said in early October. Here’s what he said:
“Any action… that forces us to litigate, or have to consider litigation, will be considered further evidence of obstruction of justice.”
‘Here is what the Chairman effectively said, and what one of his committee members restated just this week: If the President asserts his constitutional rights, it’s that much more evidence he is guilty.
‘That kind of bullying is antithetical to American justice.
‘So those are House Democrats’ two articles of impeachment. That’s all their rushed and rigged inquiry could generate:
‘An act that the House does not even allege is criminal; and a nonsensical claim that exercising a legitimate presidential power is somehow an impeachable offense.
‘This is by far the thinnest basis for any House-passed presidential impeachment in American history. The thinnest and the weakest — and nothing else comes even close.
‘And candidly, I don’t think I am the only person around here who realizes this. Even before the House voted yesterday, Democrats had already started to signal uneasiness with its end product.
‘Before the articles even passed, the Senate Democratic Leader went on television to demand that this body re-do House Democrats’ homework for them. That the Senate should supplement Chairman Schiff’s sloppy work so it is more persuasive than Chairman Schiff himself bothered to make it.
‘Of course, every such demand simply confirms that House Democrats have rushed forward with a case that is much too weak.
‘Back in June, Speaker Pelosi promised the House would, quote, “build an ironclad case.” Never mind that she was basically promising impeachment months before the Ukraine events, but that’s a separate matter.
‘She promised “an ironclad case.”
‘And in March, Speaker Pelosi said this: “Impeachment is so divisive to the country that unless there’s something so compelling and overwhelming and bipartisan, I don’t think we should go down that path, because it divides the country.” End quote.
‘By the Speaker’s own standards, she has failed the country. This case is not compelling, not overwhelming, and as a result, not bipartisan. This failure was made clear to everyone earlier this week, when Senator Schumer began searching for ways the Senate could step out of our proper role and try to fix House Democrats’ failures for them.
‘And it was made even more clear last night, when Speaker Pelosi suggested that House Democrats may be too afraid to even transmit their work product to the Senate.
‘The prosecutors are getting cold feet in front of the entire country and second-guessing whether they even want to go to trial.
‘They said impeachment was so urgent that it could not even wait for due process but now they’re content to sit on their hands. It is comical.
‘Democrats’ own actions concede that their allegations are unproven.
‘But the articles aren’t just unproven. They’re also constitutionally incoherent. Frankly, if either of these articles is blessed by the Senate, we could easily see the impeachment of every future president of either party.
‘Let me say that again: If the Senate blesses this historically low bar, we will invite the impeachment of every future president.
‘The House Democrats’ allegations, as presented, are incompatible with our constitutional order. They are unlike anything that has ever been seen in 230 years of this Republic.
‘House Democrats want to create new rules for this president because they feel uniquely enraged. But long after the partisan fever of this moment has broken, the institutional damage will remain.
‘I’ve described the threat to the presidency. But this also imperils the Senate itself.
‘The House has created an unfair, unfinished product that looks nothing like any impeachment inquiry in American history. And if the Speaker ever gets her house in order, that mess will be dumped on the Senate’s lap.
‘If the Senate blesses this slapdash impeachment… if we say that from now on, this is enough… then we will invite an endless parade of impeachment trials.
‘Future Houses of either party will feel free to toss up a “jump ball” every time they feel angry. Free to swamp the Senate with trial after trial, no matter how baseless the charges.
‘We would be giving future Houses of either party unbelievable new power to paralyze the Senate at their whim.
‘More thin arguments. More incomplete evidence. More partisan impeachments.
In fact, this same House of Representatives has already indicated that they themselves may not be done impeaching!
‘The House Judiciary Committee told a federal court this week that it will continue its impeachment investigation even after voting on these articles. And multiple Democratic members have already called publicly for more.
‘If the Senate blesses this, if the nation accepts it, presidential impeachments may cease being once-in-a-generation events and become a constant part of the political background noise.
‘This extraordinary tool of last resort may become just another part of the arms race of polarization.
‘Real statesmen would have recognized, no matter their view of this president, that trying to remove him on this thin and partisan basis could unsettle the foundations of our Republic.
‘Real statesmen would have recognized, no matter how much partisan animosity might be coursing through their veins, that cheapening the impeachment process was not the answer.
‘Historians will regard this as a great irony of this era: That so many who professed such concern for our norms and traditions themselves proved willing to trample our constitutional order to get their way.
‘It is long past time for Washington D.C. to get a little perspective.
‘President Trump is not the first president with a populist streak…Not the first to make entrenched elites uncomfortable. He’s certainly not the first president to speak bluntly… to mistrust the administrative state… or to rankle unelected bureaucrats.
‘And Heaven knows he is not our first president to assert the constitutional privileges of his office rather than roll over when Congress demands unlimited sensitive information.
‘None of these things is unprecedented.
‘I’ll tell you what would be unprecedented. It will be an unprecedented constitutional crisis if the Senate hands the House of Representatives a new, partisan “vote of no confidence” that the founders intentionally withheld, destroying the independence of the presidency.
‘It will be unprecedented if we agree that any future House that dislikes any future president can rush through an unfair inquiry, skip the legal system, and paralyze the Senate with a trial. The House could do that at will under this precedent.
‘It will be unprecedented if the Senate says secondhand and thirdhand testimony from unelected civil servants is enough to overturn the people’s vote.
‘It will be an unprecedented constitutional crisis if the Senate agrees to set the bar this low — forever.
‘It is clear what this moment requires. It requires the Senate to fulfill our founding purpose.
‘The framers built the Senate to provide stability. To take the long view for our Republic. To safeguard institutions from the momentary hysteria that sometimes consumes our politics. To keep partisan passions from boiling over.
‘The Senate exists for moments like this.
‘That’s why this body has the ultimate say in impeachments.
‘The framers knew the House would be too vulnerable to transient passions and violent factionalism. They needed a body that could consider legal questions about what has been proven and political questions about what the common good of our nation requires.
‘Hamilton said explicitly in Federalist 65 that impeachment involves not just legal questions, but inherently political judgments about what outcome best serves the nation.
‘The House can’t do both. The courts can’t do both.
‘This is as grave an assignment as the Constitution gives to any branch of government, and the framers knew only the Senate could handle it. Well, the moment the framers feared has arrived.
‘A political faction in the lower chamber have succumbed to partisan rage. They have fulfilled Hamilton’s prophesy that impeachment will, quote, “connect itself with the pre-existing factions… enlist all their animosities… [and] there will always be the greatest danger that the decision will be regulated more by the comparative strength of parties, than by the real demonstrations of innocence or guilt.” End quote.
‘That is what happened in the House last night. The vote did not reflect what had been proven. It only reflects how they feel about the President.
‘The Senate must put this right. We must rise to the occasion.
‘There is only one outcome that is suited to the paucity of evidence, the failed inquiry, the slapdash case.
‘Only one outcome suited to the fact that the accusations themselves are constitutionally incoherent.
‘Only one outcome that will preserve core precedents rather than smash them into bits in a fit of partisan rage because one party still cannot accept the American people’s choice in 2016.
‘It could not be clearer which outcome would serve the stabilizing, institution-preserving, fever-breaking role for which the United States Senate was created… and which outcome would betray it.
‘The Senate’s duty is clear. The Senate’s duty is clear.
‘When the time comes, we must fulfill it.’
This right here is exactly why this doesn’t end for the country in anything other than oceans of blood.
In what way exactly? Who is going to be attacked? Dems? Where? How?
I think especially the last one.
Then she can go hang from a lamp post.
The Murder Turtle was right on target. Bravo.
You hope
Leftists never stop, they keep pushing and pushing without cessation. When cornered, they resort to violence...and once again they never stop until it becomes extreme. It’s the way Leftist revolutions always go. This one will not be any different.
I’m not going to kisten ro whining from people who are trying to destroy this country, they can stuff it
The question is: Whose blood?
I hope Trump and loyalist military brass have plans for a decapitation strike against the Left.
Call it a counter-coup.
Impeached for winning the Presidency. Only a Democrat is allowed to win.
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