| If you watched this Lindsey Graham clip from last night, you already saw this coming. No defense case for the president. No witnesses called by Trump. House Dems would call their own witnesses, the president’s lawyers would cross-examine them, and then the Senate would vote.
No Hunter Biden testimony. No Joe Biden. No Adam Schiff. No whistleblower. Trump would be asked to do something he seems incapable of doing, keeping his mouth shut while he’s impugned by his enemies. Formally shut, I mean. His attorneys won’t get to put anyone on the stand but he’s going to live-tweet the whole trial from his recliner, needless to say. McConnell, Graham, and the rest are betting that the certainty of acquittal will soothe angry Trumpers who’ll be pissed that the president won’t get to go on offense. He’s a “counterpuncher,” after all, and the Dems have been beating on him for weeks — and now his own allies in Congress won’t let him get up and take a few swings at them. Conservative media will be unhappy, although I doubt any Senate Republicans care. They know no grudges will be held next fall so long as they deliver the proper verdict.
Thune and Barrasso are numbers two and three in the Republican leadership. These aren’t rando backbenchers speculating about how things are likely to go. If anyone would know how the trial is shaping up, they would. “Not sure how you have a fair trial without calling witnesses,” sniffed one unnamed House Republican to the Examiner about the Senate’s plan to short-circuit Trump’s defense. That’s exactly the position Trump will take, which will turn the tables on Lindsey Graham. Graham has been the most outspoken critic of the House process on Trump’s behalf among Senate Republicans, frequently attacking it as unfair and short of due process. Trump’s going to level the same charge against Graham’s Senate process, though: There’s no due process if I can’t present a defense. That would be a fun debate since defendants don’t typically complain about procedural unfairness in cases where they’re on a glide path to acquittal. But Trump might reply that this isn’t any ol’ criminal or civil case. As has been said many times since the Ukraine scandal broke big, impeachment is a political process. Democrats have spent two months using official channels trying to build political momentum for removing the president from office. Why shouldn’t he be allowed two weeks to use official channels to build some political momentum of his own? What will Lindsey say? He complained in yesterday’s interview that impeachment is hurting the country, which is why it’s crucial to end the trial ASAP. Trump will respond by saying that Democrats should have thought of that before they launched this process. If we want to deter future unjust impeachments, we should let the president present a vigorous defense on the grandest stage, his Senate trial, and give House Dems a bloody nose. What will Lindsey say? Graham’s fear here, obviously, is having to take a series of tough votes on whether to call individual witnesses. It’ll be painful to deny Trump a defense by voting to acquit as soon as the House’s case is finished but it’ll be even more painful if the caucus has to deny him that defense piecemeal by voting down one witness after another. You think Lindsey Graham wants to have to vote no on calling Hunter Biden and then no on calling Joe Biden and then no on calling Schiff and then no on calling the whistleblower? Even if he’s willing to vote yes on all four, he knows that vulnerable incumbents like Collins and Gardner who are facing reelection in battlegrounds next fall won’t want to take those votes. That’ll be Graham’s and McConnell’s ace in the hole when Trump starts complaining — the moderates won’t let us call these witnesses even if the rest of us wanted to. We need 51 votes. If I were Collins or Murkowski or Romney, I’d refuse to let them scapegoat me that way. I’d announce up front that I’ll go along with whatever the rest of the caucus wants when it comes to calling witnesses. If Lindsey Graham doesn’t want Hunter Biden to testify, let him vote no himself or find three people elsewhere in the caucus to vote no. See what happens. By the way, the witness list isn’t the only way the trial might disappoint Trump:
I don’t know why they want the trial to start ASAP. Trump’s lawyers need time to prepare for cross-examination. And the longer impeachment drags on, the more likely the public is to grow exasperated with it. If they start the trial next week, while Americans are still somewhat paying attention to the daily news, people might see it as a natural next step in the process. If they start the trial in January, with voters still in a post-holiday haze and having lost track of the impeachment saga, the reaction may be more “Are we still doing this?!” If you’re bummed about Trump not getting to put on a defense, look at it this way: The quicker the trial is, the sooner Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren get back on the trail, the greater the chances that Trump will have a far-left opponent next fall. It’d be a supreme irony if an impeachment process stemming from Trump’s attempt to get dirt on Joe Biden ended up improving Biden’s chances in the early states by taking his chief competition away from the campaign for weeks at a critical moment. The Senate might be able to get this done by mid-January if there are no defense witnesses called. Plenty of time for the socialist and the near-socialist to get back to Iowa and make their pitch. |
Poster Comment:
What if you threw an impeachment and nobody showed up?
Senate GOP is queasy but confident they can prevail. Trump wants to go for blood and try to crush the Dems with this.
No one said that winning would be pretty.
#1: Judas Goat To: Tooconservative (#0)
How many of Fearless Leader's cult members can find Odessa, or even Ukraine, on a map?
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ukr...mafia#Odessa_mafia/Malina
Judas Goat posted on 2019-12-11 09:49:40 Reply Private Reply
#2: Tooconservative To: Peromischievous leucopus (#1)
Tooconservative posted on 2019-12-11 12:50:41 Reply Private Reply
#3: Judas Goat To: Tooconservative (#2)
Hmm. Where's Fearless Leader's "concern" about the corruption associated with Yanukovych and his handlers?
Judas Goat posted on 2019-12-11 12:58:55 Reply Private Reply
#4: Tooconservative To: Peromischievous leucopus (#3)
That didn't excuse some Nazi types from burning over 40 trade unionists to death in their own HQ in Odessa.
Little more was reported but I think the Odessa mafia murdered every Nazi in the area who didn't flee. Odessa was a war zone for a few weeks.
Tooconservative posted on 2019-12-11 13:05:16 Reply Private Reply
#5: Judas Goat To: Tooconservative (#4)
There's a long history of "little more" being reported regarding the Organized Criminal corruption that's infested the region.
Got Holodomor?
Evidently the tribal Oligarchs don't have "TO SECURE THESE RIGHTS" as a high priority for those under their purview - especially when they can make a profit from instigating conflict and selling arms to both sides:
www.google.com/search?&q=lord+of+war+mogilevich
Judas Goat posted on 2019-12-11 13:18:00 Reply Private Reply
#6: Tooconservative To: Peromischievous leucopus (#5)
It is a major problem for trying to prove anything that did or didn't happen in the region.
Ukraine is a problem child of the old Soviet regime. It was for them, it is for us as well. And history does us no favors. Sometimes, you just have to have a cutoff date and insist that "now is now regardless of what happened back in ____". Yet it is undeniable that these historical grudges do play a major role in current events in Ukraine.
In other words, there is no "there" there. The more you know about their very sad history, the less any solution seems to be workable. Nevertheless, American governments of both parties have to deal with Ukraine and its history. In the modern era, our meddling there go back to American insistence on provisions to detach northwest oblasts from Ukraine due to Nazi alignment in the Versailles treaty ending WW I. Add in a lot of meddling by Ukrainians who had immigrated to America and organized to use American power to inflict their agenda on Ukraine itself and you have a recipe for misery, all instigated due to American meddling at the behest of American Ukrainians.
Tooconservative posted on 2019-12-11 13:27:24 Reply Private Reply
#7: Judas Goat To: Tooconservative (#6)
Solzhenitsyn fills in a few blanks.
Judas Goat posted on 2019-12-11 13:33:35 Reply Private Reply
#8: Judas Goat To: Tooconservative (#6)
And now Ukrainian Tribal meddling has metastasized into, demoralized, American culture.
Judas Goat posted on 2019-12-11 13:37:13 Reply Private Reply
#9: misterwhite To: Tooconservative (#0)
The Democrats and the MSM will cry whitewash and coverup while secretely thanking the stupid party for not exposing the depth of their corruption with a full trial.
misterwhite posted on 2019-12-11 13:58:01 Reply Private Reply
#10: Tooconservative To: Peromischievous leucopus (#8)
We aren't making them better, we're making both our main parties worse. The corruption in Ukraine is contagious. And it has become more infectious over the last century of America meddling in Ukrainian politics and Ukraine (via its organized immigrants) meddling in American politics.
It is a relationship that needs much more scrutiny. And far more limits on the bilateral meddling.
Tooconservative posted on 2019-12-11 14:04:20 Reply Private Reply
#11: Tooconservative To: misterwhite (#9)
We saw that with the brief Senate trial of Xlinton. History barely notices.
There will inevitably be some griping from someone no matter the outcome(s). Legislative careers may be ended, law enforcement officials may get sent to jail, etc.
There is no happy ending for all concerned. There may be no winners but everyone could end up as a loser. I think this is the case already.
Tooconservative posted on 2019-12-11 14:08:00 Reply Private Reply
#12: Judas Goat To: Tooconservative (#10)
Yep.
It's a relationship rooted in human nature - for which the counterbalance constituted by America's founders was a Republic where the Rule of Law was intended to constrain the Rule of Men.
The inability/refusal of Trump's cult to articulate that intent is very troubling, and revealing.
Judas Goat posted on 2019-12-11 14:18:50 Reply Private Reply
#13: Tooconservative To: Peromischievous leucopus (#12)
Tooconservative posted on 2019-12-11 15:08:47 Reply Private Reply
#14: Judas Goat To: Tooconservative (#13)
Nah, the problem goes back a lot further than that.
The Bible documents repeated incidents where the state became an object of worship instead of God's instrument for the lawful governance of fallen humanity.
Korah, Pharaoh's former treasurer, wasn't the first - or the last - to assume dominion over the faith of others ala state-established fraud.
Judas Goat posted on 2019-12-11 15:23:23 Reply Private Reply
#15: misterwhite To: Tooconservative (#11)
His guilt was obvious. No need to drag out the trial.
But what took Ken Starr two years only took the Democrats two months. Someone has to do a thorough investigation. I say do it at the Senate trial.
misterwhite posted on 2019-12-12 11:19:56 Reply Private Reply
#16: Mudboy Slim To: Tooconservative (#0)
Mudboy Slim posted on 2019-12-13 16:26:46 Reply Private Reply