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In the Impeachment, It’s Joe Manchin’s Time
It is Senator Joe Manchin’s time to shine. It is time for him to stand up for party and for country. He has a chance to plant his standard in the ground and start rallying the Democratic Party back to responsible, American governance. Imagine this scene Friday, as the proceedings resume:
Senate Majority Leader rises: “I yield two minutes to the senior Senator from West Virginia.” A gasp and stir goes through the chamber, Chief Justice Roberts is gobsmacked. Sen. Manchin strikes forward and proclaims:
I am a Democrat.
I always have been.
I want my party back.
I demand my party back.
Back from the haters.
Back from people who call my people “deplorable” and mock them on every television screen.
Back from the socialists, whose bad ideas and violent ends we Democrats have repeatedly rejected.
What I have seen for the past week is a profoundly undemocratic play by extremists operating under my proud party’s banner.
No more. This ends now. We start to take back our party now.
As a proud West Virginian, as an American, I have seen and heard enough. I move for an immediate vote and dismissal of these contemptible charges.
With that, Senator Manchin walks back to his seat. Sen. Romney slumps in his chair, colorless, the picture of a man who realizes history has passed him by, that he has no power left to strike at, to spite the Great Big Ugly Man and his voters.
Published in Politics
Joe Manchin: “I want to join with Senator Lamar Alexander in finding that there is a mountain of evidence that Trump withheld aid to pressure Ukraine into investigating the Bidens.”
Good for Trump, doing the job the Democrats failed to do.
So, contrary to Lamar Alexander, you are praising Trump, despite the “mountain of evidence” that Trump withheld aid to Ukraine to pressure Ukraine to investigate the Bidens. Or does the Senator Senator from Tennessee have it wrong? (Lamar Alexander sits in Howard Baker’s old seat. Howard Baker, who famously said, “What did the President know, and when did he know it?”)
If Trump used a little wiggle room to pressure Ukraine to root out the corruption, Bidens and all, that’s good. The Democrats could have policed their own a little better, and could have disavowed Biden for pressuring Ukraine to become more corrupt. But they failed.
Unfortunately (or fortunately?), I don’t have an exact count, but I believe were now in to double figures (counting other threads) in terms of your refusal/inability to follow up your comment in #12 by answering my query in #16 and repeated in #21.
(Censored.)
You may getting mixed up with the rules about Eric Ciaramella.
Ah, how I wish it could be so.
Not investigating the Bidens is a dereliction of duty.
Hypothetical question for you, Gary.
Joe Biden decides to rob a bank. Trump sees him doing it and calls the police. Trump knows very well that if Joe Biden gets arrested robbing a bank, his [Trump’s] chances of re-election are greatly enhanced. Who’s the bad guy here?
Looking past the sale again. There was a legitimate reason to request an investigation. There was nothing wrong with doing that. There is no reason for a censure vote.
I answered you in Comment #30. I said
“Well Republican Senator Lamar Alexander just referred to the House Manager’s “mountain of evidence” to prove that Trump withheld aid, in part, to pressure Ukraine to investigate the Biden’s. Good enough?”
Here is a further answer from Lamar Alexander’s website:
Washington, D.C., January 30, 2020 — United States Senator Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) today released the following statement on his vote regarding additional evidence in the impeachment proceedings:
“I worked with other senators to make sure that we have the right to ask for more documents and witnesses, but there is no need for more evidence to prove something that has already been proven and that does not meet the United States Constitution’s high bar for an impeachable offense.
“There is no need for more evidence to prove that the president asked Ukraine to investigate Joe Biden and his son, Hunter; he said this on television on October 3, 2019, and during his July 25, 2019, telephone call with the president of Ukraine. There is no need for more evidence to conclude that the president withheld United States aid, at least in part, to pressure Ukraine to investigate the Bidens; the House managers have proved this with what they call a ‘mountain of overwhelming evidence.’ There is no need to consider further the frivolous second article of impeachment that would remove the president for asserting his constitutional prerogative to protect confidential conversations with his close advisers.
“It was inappropriate for the president to ask a foreign leader to investigate his political opponent and to withhold United States aid to encourage that investigation. When elected officials inappropriately interfere with such investigations, it undermines the principle of equal justice under the law. But the Constitution does not give the Senate the power to remove the president from office and ban him from this year’s ballot simply for actions that are inappropriate.
“The question then is not whether the president did it, but whether the United States Senate or the American people should decide what to do about what he did. I believe that the Constitution provides that the people should make that decision in the presidential election that begins in Iowa on Monday.
“The Senate has spent nine long days considering this ‘mountain’ of evidence, the arguments of the House managers and the president’s lawyers, their answers to senators’ questions and the House record. Even if the House charges were true, they do not meet the Constitution’s ‘treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors’ standard for an impeachable offense.
“The framers believed that there should never, ever be a partisan impeachment. That is why the Constitution requires a 2/3 vote of the Senate for conviction. Yet not one House Republican voted for these articles. If this shallow, hurried and wholly partisan impeachment were to succeed, it would rip the country apart, pouring gasoline on the fire of cultural divisions that already exist. It would create the weapon of perpetual impeachment to be used against future presidents whenever the House of Representatives is of a different political party.
“Our founding documents provide for duly elected presidents who serve with ‘the consent of the governed,’ not at the pleasure of the United States Congress. Let the people decide.” (Emphasis Added.)
But that simply is not true by a mile. Please forgive me for quoting a Biden staffer, but this is the most concise response to what really happened.
See my comment elsewhere about taking at face value comments from Biden’s “rapid response director.”Perhaps you were expecting “You know, Hunter got paid a whole lot of money with no qualifications while Daddy was VP. It is what its is.”
Nonresponsive.
One more time. The comment in question is:
The question that you keep ducking was:
And the answer from you is . . . ?
Orange Man Bad.
Gary, this is really a bit much, even for you.
I get it, Orange Man Bad.
Now, that is not what this post is about. It is about the very clear problem within the Democratic Party, a problem you likely agree exists. My bit of fiction, contrasted with the actual behavior of the Democrats, including Senator Manchin, shows how deeply the left has gotten control of the Congressional parties.
You just might be concerned about that and have some view on how the Democrats might be brought back to being a center left party in the American tradition, rejecting the Socialists. Or do you think it better that we have an openly socialist, call it a Democratic Socialist, party?
Hunter follows in the path of Richard Nixon’s brother and Jimmy Carter’s brother who cashed in.
I am at home on my iPad so I can’t cut and paste Lamar Alexander’s full statement where Senator Alexander points to the mountain of evidence that Trump wrongfully pressured Ukraine to investigate the Biden’s.
Here’s the part that makes clear the “mountainof evidence” term you keep attributing to Alexander wasn’t his phrase but that of the Democrats in the House.
Not even close to the same, as you know, but Orange Man Bad and whatever it takes, including any level of corruption and actual attacks on our republic, on our Constitution is justified in your view.
Kindly stop polluting my post with your diversionary comments. We all get it: Orange Man Bad and whatever it takes to destroy him is justified.
Manchin is a smart politician who understands west virginia.
West Virginians love Joe Manchin because he is an instititution in WV.
Trump has a phone call with the president of Ukraine while others are listening and taking notes.
The president of Ukraine doesn’t feel pressure to do what Trump asks.
He is not aware that this is part of getting aid.
How can there be a quid pro quo when Ukraine didn’t realize there was a quid or a quo?
Because it is necessary for there to be a quid pro quo to remove Trump from office. Why is it necessary to remove Trump from office when he is doing such a good job as President? Because he has succeeded so well that he has demonstrated their failure as prognosticators (Never Trumpers) or their failure in setting political policy (Democrats). Rather than admit their failure, they must destroy and erase the object demonstrating their failure.
According to M. Scott Peck in his books The Road Less Traveled and People of the Lie, people who are evil attack others rather than face their own failures. That is why a scent of sulfur seems to follow those seeking to destroy Trump because Trump is successful.
but not all quid pro quo are crimes or a high crime and misdemeanor.
Quid pro quo is the essence of foreign policy, diplomacy and negotiations in general.
a plea bargain is an example of a quid pro quo.
If a quid pro quo is the best they have they will go with it. And even if you and I realize it is not a high crime or misdemeanor (or any type of a crime), in their eyes it has to be a high crime or misdemeanor, because that is the only lever they have to remove him.