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Of Impeachment and Accountability
Never Trump Republicans and their Democratic co-conspirators have another trick up their sleeves. Knowing that they probably do not have the votes to convict and remove the President in the Senate, they are desperately searching for a way to pull it off and they think they’ve found it: A secret vote and/or a generous reading of the two-thirds rule.
Pushed by people like lobbyist Juleanna Glover (formerly of the Bush 43 Administration and Bill Kristol acolyte), Laurence Tribe and former Sen. Jeff Flake, the operating theory is that if Senators were freed from accountability to their voters there would be 30 to 35 Republicans in the Senate ready to vote “yes” on conviction.
The other pipe dream is that the Constitution only demands a two-thirds majority of the Senators present. For every Senator that refuses to attend it brings that two-thirds number lower. But staying away is the same as a yes vote.
Jim Geraghty points out at National Review, “If Trump really is an unconstitutional menace who is abusing the power of the presidency for his personal interests, stopping him ought to be worth losing a Senate seat. And if this action isn’t worth losing a Senate seat over, then it’s hard to see how it is worth removing a president.”
A secret ballot after secret proceedings in the House sounds like a recipe for disaster. How do you think the public would react?
Published in Politics
My point is his encouragement of “Lock Her Up” at his rallies.
Yes. That happened over 210 years ago. Do you have any examples from the last 200 years?
I didn’t vote for either of them.
I did vote for McMullin. It is not uncommon for campaigns to run out of money. Trump after 5 bankruptcies knows all about that.
Hey! We won last week!
Yes, there is one other example from over 210 years ago. I stand corrected. Can you name any examples from, say, the last 200 years. Jefferson was our third President; Trump is our 45th. Any examples from Presidents 4 through 44?
Fact check: True for the last 200 years.
So what? Man, who the heck cares what people shout at a rally?
Obama did all sorts of actual corrupt stuff, and man, you just don’t care. You said nothing while he was President.
But did Cleveland seek Arthur’s prosecution?
My opposition to Obama was well known in my community. I just didn’t post it in Ricochet.
You voted for someone who did not pay his staff, and you are an apologist for him, but Trump is always the bad guy.
You can’t see it, but it is so clear. Trump alone is always wrong for you. No one else every is bad as Trump. It is sad.
And I notice, you called Barr a liar. It is amazing, Gary, you are so willing to cast out as immoral anyone working with or defending Trump, no matter their past records. It is a monomania with you.
I am waiting for you to tell us, by the way, why you think you know better than Andrew McCarthy. Care to take a swing at that one? He did not call Barr a liar. I am sure he would have.
SPeaking of lies, It is clear that between the Schff and Nunes memos, Nunes was 100% right and your guy was wrong. Care to comment on that? Yes? No?
Trump has not sought anyone’s prosecution, Gary. Your complaint is that Trump did nothing while a crowd chanted “lock her up” and that is some sort of unique crime.
You cannot even stay on target with your gripes.
You know the moderators groan when you post like this, right? You don’t change any minds, you just look silly. You must like looking silly.
I admit, I helping you look silly.
Ah, so you come to a conservative website only to attack the most conservative (in results) president since your Avatar, but the most socialist in the past 50 years, you don’t attack him here?
There are, unfortunately, large swaths of American (presidential) history that I’m not too knowledgeable about–including the careers of quite a few “minor” presidents. Since you were wrong about this, and wrong about Presidents criticizing other Presidents, there would seem to be a pretty good chance that there are other examples. However, I’m not going to do a deep dive into our past just for the satisfaction of proving you wrong (again). That happens enough as it is without expending so much energy.
As an aside, one of the major issues that Ike ran on in 1952 was “corruption” in the Truman Administration. He hit the theme very hard, to the point where Truman’s reputation took years to rehabilitate.
Andrew McCarthy is a gifted prosecutor.
No. Both have strengths and both have weaknesses. But that is far off of topic.
Arthur did not murder a political opponent in a duel. Arthur also did not leak classified information and get Americans killed due to negligence.
Arthur was a “corrupt” Customs Collector at the Port of NY. Every Conkling machine Republican was considered corrupt.
You aren’t even in the same universe with this argument. Try again. Stay on topic.
I checked this out with an Editor of Ricochet who said that as long as I stay within the Code of Conduct, I am okay. One moderator has told me that s/he has an issue with me. I encourage you to avoid ad hominem attacks. Play the ball, not the man.
Blessings.
Obama is no longer President. I have often praised Trump for judges, regulations and taxes. My issue with Trump is not his policies, some of which are good, and some of which (North Korea, Tariffs, Russia) are bad. My issue with Trump is his lack of character, his lack of honesty, and his lack of capacity.
But I do not recall Ike calling for Truman’s prosecution.
Gary, your point before was that Hillary was not out of the ordinary for presidential nominees. That seems like either something simply thrown out there because of your dislike for Trump, or — if you truly believe it — displays a cynical contempt for past presidential nominees and the voters and political party delegates who selected them that’s on a Zinn-like level.
And irregardless of who the GOP nominee was in 2016, Hillary’s violations were already baked into the equation for the 2016 campaign season, as mostly likely was the free pass she was given by Comey — it’s hard to believe if Cruz, Rubio or even Jeb! had been the GOP candidate in ’16, the FBI director’s decision would have been any different, though whether or not FBI-New York or NYPD would have gone to the mat for Cruz, Rubio or Jeb! and forced FBI-Washington’s hand on the information Huma had illegally downloaded to her and hubby’s laptop is an open question (i.e. — McCabe would have sat on the information through Election Day, if he hadn’t been afraid the NYPD or the FBI’s New York office wasn’t going to leak the details in advance, and that may also been because he feared both agencies had Trump supporters in key places who knew about the laptop through the Anthony Weiner sexting investigation).
By trying to normalize Hillary as a candidate to denegrate Trump, you’re tarring the candidates in the previous 57 presidential elections as being on the same level as Hillary. That’s Zinn-ian in nature.
Nor did Trump.
Can’t play the ball, Gary. You keep moving the goalposts.
That’s what “As an aside . . .” meant. Still, it seems relevant to the discussion.
And that’s my biggest problem with most of this anti-Trump stuff. It’s all about style over substance.
I call folks like Bill Kristol “Titanic Republicans.” The new leftist, quasi-Communist Democratic Party is the iceberg and you’re more than willing to smash the ship into it provided you can put on your dinner clothes and “die like a gentleman!” Well, you’re free to feel that way but I’ll be damned if I’m going to go down with the ship as easily.
I don’t think that you answered the question. Did Cleveland seek Garfield’s prosecution?
This is actually a great analogy.
If the Titanic had steered straight for the iceberg, the front of the ship would have crumpled but it would survived. But allowing the ship to scrap the iceberg, too many compartments were compromised.
Since I brought him up, I dunno. And I’m not going to read 600 newspapers to find out. But do you really think it’s beyond the realm of likelihood that in repeatedly calling him corrupt and saying he should not be holding public office, he might have said he should be in jail instead, which I believe would satisfy the standard here? Because that’s exactly the kind of thing that people say when calling someone corrupt. Which was kind of my original point.
Ask Troy Senik. He’s writing a biography of Cleveland.
Oh noes! President Trump thinks politicians who are criminals should be held accountable and sent to prison if appropriate. Oh noes!
Well, I and many, many people agree with him. It’s a travesty of justice that her pals in the DOJ, the FBI, and the CIA looked the other way as she broke one law after another.
As for me, I prefer equality under the law. And if that means we need to “lock her up,” then so be it. The longer the Clintons and their corrupt pals walk free, the closer we are to the end of the American experiment.
Gary, I’ll mark you down as one who believes that Democrats shouldn’t be held accountable.
Prosecution for what? Garfield died months into his presidency. Four years before Cleveland became president. Do you mean Chester Arthur? Arthur was selected as Garfield’s VP because he had ties to Conkling’s enormous Stalwart machine in NY and they wanted to unify the R ticket. Arthur may or may not have been “corrupt” when he was in the Custom’s House, but he was never accused of a crime. “Corrupt” is a pretty vague term that can be used to describe almost anything you don’t like. Kind of like every word the Democrats use to describe Trump today. Everyone who had money in the Gilded Age was accused of being “corrupt.”
You’re so deflective about this stuff you have me writing about Chester Arthur…..
Clinton did commit serious crimes that threatened national security and got Americans killed. Trump is speaking for a large portion of the country when he says we want to see her pay for her crimes. As someone who is “country first” you should be the first to come out in support of no one being above the law.
It’s unAmerican to lock up criminals?
Really? Now I’m glad this thread went off the rails! I love Gilded Age history and I will definitely pick up Troy’s book.