Article by Stephen Green in "PJMedia":
Are you one of the millions of Sane-Americans who can't get too worked up about Donald Trump's impeachment?
It's
impossible to avoid news of the Dems' Big Sham, which is so "exciting"
that CNN spent hours on Monday running a never-ending picture-in-picture
livestream of the empty Senate chamber. If that doesn't get your blood pumping, what could?
Democrats can't come right out and say they're impeaching Trump just for being Trump,
even though that's exactly what they're doing. So they held this big
investigation, and found that yes indeed, President Trump had committed
foreign policy. They can't actually impeach him for that, either, so
instead they impeached him for defending himself against the charge of
having committed foreign policy.
Before
we get to my little thought experiment, let's be clear on exactly what
foreign policy Trump is guilty of having committed. For that, let's go to the indispensable John Solomon:
It is irrefutable, and not a conspiracy theory, that Joe Biden bragged in this 2018 speech to a foreign policy group that he threatened in March 2016 to withhold $1 billion in U.S. aid to Kiev if then-Ukraine’s president Petro Poroshenko didn’t immediately fire Shokin.“I said, ‘You’re not getting the billion.’ I’m going to be leaving here in, I think it was about six hours. I looked at them and said: ‘I’m leaving in six hours. If the prosecutor is not fired, you’re not getting the money,’” Biden told the 2018 audience in recounting what he told Poroshenko“Well, son of a bitch, he got fired. And they put in place someone who was solid at the time,” Biden told the Council on Foreign Relations event.
Whoops.
That's what Joe Biden did, not Donald Trump -- my bad. What Trump did
was ask the president of Ukraine to look into what happened, to see if
any Americans (cough, Hunter Biden, cough) might have been involved in
some high-level and very highly-paid corruption. There was no arm-twisting, no illegal withholding of aid,
or anything remotely like a high crime or a misdemeanor. If there had
been they'd be in the Articles of Impeachment -- and I'd be writing a
much different column today.
Here's where we get to that thought experiment.
Let's
pretend that Joe Biden had a different name. No, better: Let's pretend
that Joe Biden had a different letter after his name. Let's pretend he's
Joe Biden (R), former vice president under George W. Bush.
In that case, what would the Democrats be doing differently? Literally everything.
Instead
of impeaching Trump, they'd be praising him (although perhaps
reluctantly) for his non-partisan willingness to look into Republican
malfeasance. Adam Schiff would hold months worth of hearings, looking
back into the Bush administration in ways he'd never dare look back into
Obama's. The Democrat-controlled press would be 24/7 "Biden! Biden! Biden!" Jerry Nadler would have to go back to, I dunno, eating mayonnaise with an ice cream scoop.
So
while the other, much-more talented writers here at PJMedia have been
doing stellar jobs of covering all the ins and outs of the impeachment
charade, I just haven't been able to muster the interest. The thing is
such an obvious partisan hit job, that I've found it impossible to
muster more energy than it takes to roll my eyes.
That's
not to say Trump's impeachment isn't a serious issue, because clearly
it is. But not for any of the reasons listed in the Articles of
Impeachment, not for any of the "revelations" of the investigation, not
for any of the House antics that got us here, or for any of the Senate
antics we're witnessing right now.
It's
serious because the Democrats have subverted the weightiest action
described in the Constitution -- the unmaking of a freely elected
president -- into a vitriolic shamble of pure partisanship.
Bill
Clinton was impeached for obstruction of justice, perjury and suborning
perjury. He was rightly impeached for those high crimes and
misdemeanors, but not removed from office because the Senate decided
(rightly, IMHO) that since it was "just about sex," his crimes didn't
rise to a level serious enough for removal. He stained a dress and lied
about it, Congress stained his reputation. Fair enough, even if it was
one of those compromises doomed to please almost no one.
Richard Nixon was going to be impeached, and almost certainly removed from office in a bipartisan vote,
for much more serious offenses. He chose to resign (wisely, IMHO),
rather than put the country through a political trauma unlike any in our
sometimes troubled history.
Donald
Trump has been impeached for having the temerity to look into a
Democrat's guilty-by-his-own-admission malfeasance on behalf of his
coke-whoring son.
OK, maybe I'm a little worked up, but clearly not for the reasons the Democrats wanted.
So
let the Democrats "make their case for removing Trump for office," as
all my desktop notifications just started screaming at me every couple
of minutes. Because they don't have a case to make, and the (D) after
Biden's name is all the proof you need.