Maybe deep down House Speaker Nancy Pelosi wanted this, but she also knew the political ramifications. It would be an earthquake, and one in which Democrats could have reaped total destruction. It would galvanize the Trump base and give the president all the ammunition he needed to rip apart the Democratic Party for what is arguably one of the most explicitly partisan witch hunts in recent memory. The impeachment proceedings of President Trump are not yet official, but as Cortney wrote yesterday, a Thursday vote is going to be held. Former Bush press secretary Ari Fleischer was on Fox News’ "Special Report with Bret Baier" where he suggested that Pelosi is doing a retroactive makeup with this vote. Why? Well, the optics can’t be polished, especially on something as serious as impeachment (via RCP):
ARI FLEISCHER: Fairness is a fundamental American value, and this should not come down to a vote or not a vote. It should always be marked by fairness. If they have a vote now, you can not make up for the lack of fairness for the last month where we've had a secret impeachment process, with secret witnesses and secret transcripts all started by a secret whistle-blower. That is not how we conduct things to be fair to anybody in this country. So I think this is a little bit of retroactive makeup by Speaker Pelosi who recognized that they do have a problem. And it's not a process problem. Fairness is a fundamental American virtue.
Make no mistake; Pelosi wants Trump gone, but maybe not in this way. This shift could signal that she knows the ground is not stable for Democrats; polls show swing state voters are not enthralled with this circus up on the Hill. With a large chunk of the House Democratic caucus hailing from the Left Coast and the liberal cesspool that is the Northeast, it shouldn’t be a shock that these clowns were fantasizing about impeachment from day one of the Trump presidency, which was buoyed by a rabid and unhinged progressive base that inhabits these lands.
The only issue is that for the 30 or so Democrats who are responsible for the party retaking the House in 2018—the margins weren’t exactly landslides, and they’re very much in play for next year. At the same time, we have mounting GOP retirements, which like in 2018, makes the House GOP's position even weaker, but that’s for another time.
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Concerning fairness, yes, House Democrats are executing all of this impeachment nonsense in secret. Transcripts are selectively released; even House GOP members on the committees involved in this quasi-coup are given one-page summaries of the interviews. Oh, and did I mention that Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA), the House Intelligence Committee chair, alleged leaker, and an all-around self-righteous clown, said that those House Republican members can only read such summaries in the presence of a Democratic staffer? I mean this game is over. There is no way to spin this as anything but a Democratic attempt to overturn the results of the 2016 election with an even shoddier cause than Russian collusion, which turned out to be a myth.
And the reason these House Democratic rebels are conducting themselves in this manner is that they were embarrassed by their public hearings on Russian collusion, where the entire country saw that act for what it was: a total nothingburger. The narrative got absolutely machine-gunned by Republicans. Democrats learned. Control the narrative at all costs, so take one of the most consequential political moves in our nation and move it into the bunker. Hey, doesn’t democracy die in darkness, unless it’s the Democrats quarterbacking the effort, right?
Secrecy in anything related to the Hill is going to be reported on, called out, and often slammed by voters who aren’t Trump deranged freaks. So, yeah—maybe Nancy is doing damage control, but will it be enough? Probably not. The horse has left the stable. The Democrats left a mess—and now the GOP should clean it up…by burning the stable to the ground the rebuilding it new. There is no make-up vote here if remedying fairness is the goal. The entire Democrat-media complex doesn’t know what the word means, so the GOP, conservatives, and the feisty, though heavily outnumbered, media outlets should get on a war-footing and quick.
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