Twardlow Loc: Arkansas

Opinion

The Inevitability of Impeachment

Even Republicans may be deciding that the president has become too great a burden to their party or too great a danger to the country.

By Elizabeth Drew

Ms. Drew is a journalist based in Washington who covered Watergate.

An impeachment process against President Trump now seems inescapable. Unless the president resigns, the pressure by the public on the Democratic leaders to begin an impeachment process next year will only increase. Too many people think in terms of stasis: How things are is how they will remain. They don’t take into account that opinion moves with events.

Whether or not there’s already enough evidence to impeach Mr. Trump — I think there is — we will learn what the special counsel, Robert Mueller, has found, even if his investigation is cut short. A significant number of Republican candidates didn’t want to run with Mr. Trump in the midterms, and the results of those e******ns didn’t exactly strengthen his standing within his party. His political status, weak for some time, is now hurtling downhill.

The midterms were followed by new revelations in criminal investigations of once-close advisers as well as new scandals involving Mr. Trump himself. The odor of personal corruption on the president’s part — perhaps affecting his foreign policy — grew stronger. Then the events of the past several days — the president’s precipitous decision to pull American troops out of Syria, Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis’s abrupt resignation, the swoon in the stock market, the pointless shutdown of parts of the government — instilled a new sense of alarm among many Republicans.

The word “impeachment” has been thrown around with abandon. The frivolous impeachment of President Bill Clinton helped to define it as a form of political revenge. But it is far more important and serious than that: It has a critical role in the functioning of our democracy.

Impeachment was the founders’ method of holding a president accountable between e******ns. Determined to avoid setting up a king in all but name, they put the decision about whether a president should be allowed to continue to serve in the hands of the representatives of the people who elected him.

The founders understood that overturning the results of a p**********l e******n must be approached with care and that they needed to prevent the use of that power as a partisan exercise or by a faction. So they wrote into the Constitution provisions to make it extremely difficult for Congress to remove a president from office, including that after an impeachment v**e in the House, the Senate would hold a trial, with a two-thirds v**e needed for conviction.

Lost in all the discussion about possible lawbreaking by Mr. Trump is the fact that impeachment wasn’t intended only for crimes. For example, in 1974 the House Judiciary Committee charged Richard Nixon with, among other things, abusing power by using the I.R.S. against his political enemies. The committee also held the president accountable for misdeeds by his aides and for failing to honor the oath of office’s pledge that a president must “take care that the laws be faithfully executed.”

The current p**********l crisis seems to have only two possible outcomes. If Mr. Trump sees criminal charges coming at him and members of his family, he may feel trapped. This would leave him the choice of resigning or trying to fight congressional removal. But the latter is highly risky.

I don’t share the conventional view that if Mr. Trump is impeached by the House, the Republican-dominated Senate would never muster the necessary 67 v**es to convict him. Stasis would decree that would be the case, but the current situation, already shifting, will have been left far behind by the time the senators face that question. Republicans who were once Mr. Trump’s firm allies have already openly criticized some of his recent actions, including his support of Saudi Arabia despite the murder of Jamal Khashoggi and his decision on Syria. They also openly deplored Mr. Mattis’s departure.

It always seemed to me that Mr. Trump’s turbulent presidency was unsustainable and that key Republicans would eventually decide that he had become too great a burden to the party or too great a danger to the country. That time may have arrived. In the end the Republicans will opt for their own political survival. Almost from the outset some Senate Republicans have speculated on how long his presidency would last. Some surely noticed that his base didn’t prevail in the midterms.

But it may well not come to a v**e in the Senate. Facing an assortment of unpalatable possibilities, including being indicted after he leaves office, Mr. Trump will be looking for a way out. It’s to be recalled that Mr. Nixon resigned without having been impeached or convicted. The House was clearly going to approve articles of impeachment against him, and he’d been warned by senior Republicans that his support in the Senate had collapsed. Mr. Trump could well exhibit a similar instinct for self-preservation. But like Mr. Nixon, Mr. Trump will want future legal protection.

Mr. Nixon was pardoned by President Gerald Ford, and despite suspicions, no evidence has ever surfaced that the fix was in. While Mr. Trump’s case is more complex than Mr. Nixon’s, the evident dangers of keeping an out-of-control president in office might well impel politicians in both parties, not without controversy, to want to make a deal to get him out of there.


https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/27/opinion/trump-impeachment-resign-drew.html?action=click&module=Opinion&pgtype=Homepage

EyeSawYou

More BS f**e news opinion crap, why do you feel the need to continue to post such unfounded BS?

Texcaster Loc: Queensland

"Too many people think in terms of stasis: How things are is how they will remain. They don’t take into account that opinion moves with events." Elizabeth Drew


Elizabeth Drew was on the ground for Watergate and knows how fast opinion can move. Nothing f**e there.

Twardlow Loc: Arkansas

I always try to learn from those who came before me, who know more, have experienced more, have learned and wish to pass it on.

I have this choice: I can listen and learn from a knowledgeable and experienced source, someone who knows more than I do, has seen more than I have, has experienced what I haven’t, or...

...I can think like you, that I know it all, that I can learn nothing, that being rude is better than being smart, being dumb is better than being informed, being a wise ass is better than being civil, being stupid is better than trying to learn or grow.

These are the choices before me, and I have chosen; you have too.

I am proud of the choices I have made, and you should be ashamed of yours.

‘Nuff said.

Kraken Loc: Barry's Bay

Well said and very deserving.

Texcaster Loc: Queensland

Maybe we should cut poor old Eyesore some slack. For some fevered reason he's taken on the mantle of 'Attic Dumpster Fire First Responder'.

Kraken Loc: Barry's Bay

He might be there first but it's to throw gas on the fire.

EyeSawYou

The only choice you decided to subscribe to is pure opinionated BS that fits your hatred for Trump.

Kraken Loc: Barry's Bay

What's not to h**e?

wilpharm Loc: Oklahoma

please twatlo, not another day of your left skewed bloviation...you are really quite boring..give it a rest..

LWW Loc: Banana Republic of America

What a pant load.

Other than the barking at the Moon left, the US e*****rate are not with you on this.

https://www.axios.com/exclusive-poll-americans-believe-cohen-dont-want-impeachment-e5ac7439-3a30-471a-bdb5-8a225ce80e12.html

wilpharm Loc: Oklahoma

twadlo has shown very serious signs of a terminal meltdown lately...he is sinking in his own sea of feces..

ole sarg Loc: south florida

He is a russian troll

MikeMck Loc: Southern Maryland on the Bay

Thank God bone spur won't be around much longer!!

dennis2146 Loc: Eastern Idaho

Anytime I hear or read, "Nuff said", it is because the speaker or writer is afraid of any other opinions than their opinion. Your opinion is about as shallow as your thought process. Who the hell are you to tell any of us that you are, "a knowledgeable and experienced source, someone who knows more than I do, has seen more than I have, has experienced what I haven’t, or..."? You are simply a person on an Internet forum who honestly has no more experience than many others of us do. You may write better prose or actually post better copied prose as you do often. But you are just agreeing with someone else who may or may not have better knowledge or more accurately, opinions than the rest of us who disagree with you.

I tend to look at your supposed choices, Obama, Hillary and so forth and wonder about your moral compass and ethics. You tend to support Obama, Hillary, Bill Clinton, and all the rest but in taking a look at all of them and their compatriots, I notice a common thread of lying to the people of America, c***ting during the e******n, passing classified documents, deleting emails, destroying phones, putting a government server in a private residence and so on. These are the people that you support. Not me.

Yes I know Trump has told untold billions of lies to the American public, most of them because he wants to showboat and emphasize his greatness. He is a performer and he is performing. But he has not told lies to the extent that the above mentioned Liberal Democrats have some of which protect the Muslims while putting forth a feeling of safety from Muslims that is a lie.

Your so called choices are ridiculous to many of us and I hope you will be happy with them in the future.

Dennis