The Inevitability of Impeachment

[marble falls]

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.

Dec. 27, 2018

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/27/opinion/trump-impeachment-resign-drew.html

A billboard asking people to sign a petition calling for the impeachment of President Trump in Times Square in New York last year.CreditJustin Lane/European Pressphoto Agency

?quality=90&auto=webp


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 elections 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.

<snip>

Impeachment was the founders’ method of holding a president accountable between elections. 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 presidential election 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 vote in the House, the Senate would hold a trial, with a two-thirds vote 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.”

<snip>

[Kajun Gal]

1. Call me crazy, but I think impeachment would only allow Pence to pardon him. Wondering

if he should serve out his term and then pay the piper. Dunno.

[marble falls]

2. And then we'll vote Pence out in 2020.

[TreasonousBastard]

3. Pence can't pardon him for NY State actions.

[jberryhill]

4. Your wish is granted - you're crazy

[bitterross]

5. Follow the money. It always leads to the answer.

The axiom, follow the money, is always relevant. It was true when it was coined with regard to Nixon. It is even more true in contemporary times.

I've long said that marijuana will be legal nationwide within the next 10 or so years. Follow the money. It is now more profitable to elected officials to vote in favor of those producing and selling it and say its all for tax revenues than it is to fund the DEA against it. The size of the budget of the DEA does not get individual congress critters re-elected. Nor do fines and prison sentences for the use of something the public clearly knows is less harmful than alcohol. The donations from people in support of legalization do get them re-elected. Those are the people who will be the winners.

How this relates to Trump is simple. He was useful up until the time the Congress passed the tax cut. By then, he had also already appointed enough ALEC-loving, right wing judges to the courts so ALEC, the chambers of commerce, etc. are very much ahead for the next generation or more.

Now, we've entered the time of diminishing returns. He's no longer worth supporting. In fact, he's begun to cost them money. It is simple math. If he cannot deliver on $$ then he's not worth them supporting. His tariffs and chaos causing uncertainty in the markets cost them money.

He will go down. Exactly how is still a great question. But he's served his purpose and has exceeded his usefulness to those who put in him office.