NOTE FROM NORM: When A Kids Game Leads To Impeachment
As a kid my friends and I used to play the “Telephone Game.”
The rules were simple. You would sit in a circle and the first person would whisper a word or phrase into the ear of the person next to them until the word or phrase reached the last person.
At the end, the last person would speak the word or phrase out loud and often it didn’t resemble anything that was uttered by the first person in the circle.
There’s an awful lot of that game going on today as it relates to the Democratic-led Impeachment Hearings being held by the House of Representatives.
An individual listening in on a conversation that President Trump had with the President of Ukraine on July 25, 2019 that the person submitted a Whistleblower complaint that was revealed by an Inspector General on September 9, 2019.
On September 24th, 2019 Speaker of the House Pelosi, egged on by members of her Caucus, announced a formal impeachment investigation into the President.
Since then the American people have been subjected to private “hearings” conducted by Democrats in which details were strategically leaked to support their narrative of a corrupt President.
Now, the American people are being subjected to a series of public “hearings” conducted by Democrats in which individuals have alleged they overheard conversations.
Or, that they were subjected to coordinated campaigns to remove them from positions in which Presidents are allowed to remove them at will.
And, believe they caught snippets of a conversation the President was having at a restaurant.
The one-party media breathlessly shares with us so-called “blockbuster” revelations that they are convinced prove the President deserves the current onslaught by their Democratic allies in Congress.
To be sure the men and women who are testifying at this private and public hearings are well-intentioned. I don’t doubt their sincerity, integrity or their love of America.
Yet, the justification for these hearings continues to be pretty thin gruel.
We are living in remarkable times. Ones in which the desire of Democrats to overthrow a President, duly elected by the people of the United States, threatens our very democracy.
In less than a year the American people will head to the polls to either re-elect the current occupant of the White House, or to replace him with a President of their choosing.
Yet, if Democrats have their way it won’t work this way.
It is absolutely clear that House Democrats intend to Impeach President Trump.
So clear is this fact that they would serve the taxpayers of America, and the cause of the United States, so much better if they simply unveiled their Articles of Impeachment and voted on them now and sent the issue to the United States Senate.
Truth be told there are few Democrats who haven’t already made up their mind on how they are going to vote. The fact is they want the President removed from office. They want to pass Articles of Impeachment.
That is, of course, their right to do so. And, in doing so they will emphasize that this has been, and always has been, nothing more than a partisan political act.
The fact that they haven’t done so already — despite any number of their members already making it clear that they will vote to impeach – without regard to what further “evidence” is or isn’t revealed at the hearings that are being held today – reveals a problem with their desire to remove President Trump.
The case lacks the strength of reason to support their rhetoric.
Nothing that has been revealed in the public hearings, or leaked from private hearings, has altered anything that wasn’t known on September 24th when Nancy Pelosi, despite resisting pressure from her members for months, abruptly shifted course and decided to impeach the President.
Yes, I know that there are those who will read this post who will, once again, shout that the President wanted to use the power of the nation’s purse to force a foreign government to investigate allegations of fraud and abuse committed by a family member of his political opponent, namely the son of Joe Biden – Hunter Biden.
But, like the “Telephone Game” what the President said, and what everyone else thought they heard, wanted to hear or claimed to hear sounds decidedly different when the person on the other end of the call, Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky, was asked to share what he thought he heard.
“There are many people abroad and in Ukraine who would like to pressure me,” Zelensky said. “However, I am president of independent Ukraine and I think it is impossible to influence me.”
The strength of American democracy is in the smooth transition of power.
The electorate chooses and the institutions of government accept that choice.
For the Presidency, absent proof of high crimes , every 4 years we have the opportunity to reconsider that choice.
The greatest threat to democracy is not irksome tweets of Donald Trump, but rather the efforts of Nancy Pelosi and the House of Representatives to void the results of the 2016 election and forestall the electorate from casting their judgment on the Trump Presidency in less than one year from now.
We deserve better.