Pelosi vs. Pence
Late last night, the House of Representatives passed a resolution, pushed by Speaker Nancy Pelosi, calling on Vice President Mike Pence to invoke the 25th Amendment to remove President Trump from office.
The vice president responded by telling Pelosi that he "will not yield" to "political games at a time so serious in the life of our Nation." Pence urged members of Congress "to avoid actions that would further divide and inflame the passions of the moment."
Unfortunately, Pence's sage advice is going unheeded by the left and, sadly, a handful of RINOs.
Today, with just seven days left in Trump's term, Speaker Pelosi is pushing articles of impeachment against the president.
Polling finds that 60% of voters believe this impeachment push is "a waste of time and money," while 77% said Congress should be working on additional responses to the coronavirus pandemic.
Moreover, by a 12-point margin (48% to 36%) voters were less likely to support members of Congress who backed impeachment. And among Republican voters, 76% said they were less likely to support a member of Congress who supported Trump's impeachment.
McConnell's Mess
Late yesterday, there was a breaking report from the New York Times that Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is backing the House impeachment effort, seeing it as an opportunity to "purge [Trump] from the party."
Granted, this was a report from the New York Times. But Sen. McConnell's office has not forcefully denied it, so it is plausible that people close to McConnell planted the report.
Some GOP consultants say it is imperative that the Republican Party reboot from Donald Trump and return to what it was before his presidency. They just don't get it.
More than 70% of Republican voters see Donald Trump's platform as the model for the future of the party. They do not see the typical GOP politician as the future model.
If the Republican establishment reverts to business as usual and goes back to worshipping at the altar of so-called "free trade" that sent our factories and jobs to China, fighting endless wars that we don't win because we fight by the ACLU's rules and open borders, pardon the pun, but the party's over.
Exactly who are the voters who these consultants think they can build a movement with? There aren't enough people in corporate board rooms and country clubs to win elections. The entire #NeverTrump movement was never more than just a few dozen well-funded Beltway consultants and pundits receiving mostly left-wing money.
Donald Trump brought ten million new voters to the GOP in the last four years. Who knows how many more he could have won over if Republican quislings had been working with instead of against him.
I hope Mitch McConnell understands that the future of the Republican Party is not a return to the neo-con alliance led by someone like Liz Cheney.
Cheney's Charge
Speaking of Liz Cheney, she is throwing her lot in with Nancy Pelosi and House Democrats by leading the charge among House Republicans to impeach President Trump.
In a statement announcing her position, Cheney declared, "There has never been a greater betrayal by a President of the United States of his office and his oath to the Constitution." Really?
So, when Barack Obama and Joe Biden gave their blessing for James Comey to spy on Donald Trump and undermine the new administration based on a hoax, that was not a betrayal of Obama's oath of office? Cheney has never used rhetoric so harsh about Obama.
Let's be clear about this: Liz Cheney is upset that Trump rejected the neocon foreign policy, a policy that says we will protect borders of foreign countries but not our own; we'll build schools in Afghanistan, but we won't rebuild our own schools in our crumbling inner cities.
Cheney and others like her are the same people who convinced me and many others that we had to take extraordinary risks with our civil liberties by trusting the professionals at the CIA and other intelligence agencies to monitor the phone conversations of our enemies.
But we later learned that those powers were abused to spy on Congress, conservatives and the Trump campaign.
Cheney is basically suggesting that everybody who was at last Wednesday's rally was engaged in a riot. The overwhelmingly majority were engaged in the normal process of protest and petitioning their government. But now they all are being lumped in with the rioters.
She is smearing many thousands of good and decent people, and I guarantee you that their sons and daughters are the ones who disproportionately fight the no-win wars that Liz Cheney has been so eager to get us into.
It is infuriating that some Republicans are willing to do the left's dirty work for them because the left won't stop with Trump. Now there are demands to expel every Republican who dared to question the election results. Thankfully, some conservatives are pushing back and demanding that Liz Cheney resign from her leadership post.
Democrat Divisions
There are some Democrats who are concerned about Nancy Pelosi's impeachment obsession. For example:
· Sen. Joe Manchin said that impeachment now is "so ill-advised."
· Former Senate Democrat Leader Tom Daschle called impeachment "a mistake."
· Liberal law professor Jonathan Turley warns that the impeachment process has been overly politicized and that so-called "snap impeachments" could become the new norm.
Other House Democrats are privately worried that the left is stoking more division at precisely the worst possible time as Joe Biden is about to be inaugurated under the theme of "America United."
As the Wall Street Journal editorial board noted, "This is a moment for Joe Biden to establish his leadership by calling off the House impeachers in service of his vow that this is a 'time to heal.'"
But I'm not holding my breath. So far, Biden has only thrown gas on the fire.
Boxer Busted
As we noted yesterday, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo warned that Chinese communists were "inside the gates," working feverishly to influence our country. He hopes there is a bipartisan consensus that will continue Trump's efforts to roll back China's influence operations. But events of the past 24 hours are not encouraging.
Former California Senator Barbara Boxer sold out to Beijing recently by becoming a paid lobbyist for a company that makes surveillance technology, which the communist regime has used to oppress Muslim Uighurs.
And when Nancy Pelosi chose her leaders for the impeachment of President Trump, she had the audacity to name Rep. Eric Swalwell as an impeachment manager!
She's not only refusing to remove Swalwell from the House Intelligence Committee, but now she's appointed him as one of the managers of this fake impeachment.
It is beyond absurd that Pelosi would appoint a man who was compromised by a communist Chinese spy to lead the effort to remove the president who has fought so hard to remove communist China's influence from America.
Just think about the message that sends to America's enemies! China's communist party bosses must be laughing their heads off.