For three months, newsrooms across the nation were feeding us story after story after story about impeachment. Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi played coy after she got her Articles following a rushed and “urgent” set of hearings in the House of Representatives. It was a fatal mistake.
Many of us were following along with rapt attention to the debacle of the impeachment hearings in the House as well as the anti-climactic conclusion to them that led to Articles of Impeachment for “Obstruction of Congress” and “Abuse of Power.” But instead of passing it off to the Senate, as prescribed by the vast majority of scholars and judges reading the Constitution and the accepted rules of engagement between the two chambers of Congress, Pelosi sat on them. There’s still no apparent strategy behind the maneuver, and as Democrats flail around to spin it, mainstream media is trying to make people care.
But we don’t.
All Pelosi has done is make herself look bad for making demands that were beyond her power to make. Impeachment is a power of the House, but trying impeachment is a power of the Senate. There is no crossover. The Senate could vote 100-0 to impeach a President, but it would hold zero legal weight. Conversely, the House could vote 435-0 on protocols to be used by the Senate in the trial, at which point the Senate would be compelled to adopt exactly zero of their proposed ideas. The founders were smart to keep this process split between the chambers. Pelosi, apparently, never got the memo.
The Senate “was never going to allow the Speaker to dictate” how to handle a trial. “The Senate will not be sucked into this precedent-breaking path,” McConnell said touting the separation of powers between the two chambers of congress. https://t.co/OwA3d8I7Wv
— Bill Mitchell (@mitchellvii) January 13, 2020
The real question isn’t whether the President will be exonerated. He will be. As it seems less and less likely the Articles will be dismissed from the outset, we appear to be heading towards a singular conclusion to the debacle. Everything between the moment Pelosi delivers the Articles and the moment Chief Justice John Roberts declares the trial adjourned is all about scoring political points through spinning of the narrative. It will continue all the way to election day, but the crucial period of time will be from bell-to-bell during the trial itself. How will the people perceive the proceedings? Will they believe it’s a giant coverup from the White House, as the media is going to attempt to make us believe? Will they see it as partisan hacking from Democrats?
Or, will they simply not care at all. Since Pelosi allowed all of the steam to spit out of her impeachment engine, it seems less likely people will pay much attention to what she or any Democrats have to say about it all.
With Iran tensions in a strange sort of limbo, news outlets and buzz around virtual water coolers continue to focus on the protests in the country following the downing of a Boeing 737-800 by the Middle Eastern nation’s air defenses. Progressive media is still trying to paint it as a mistake by President Trump to have Quds leader Qasem Soleimani killed while conservative media is highlighting the unified call from both patriotic Americans and patriotic Iranians for leaders in Tehran to step down.
The last thing we’re worried about is a set of trumped up charges that have no chance of succeeding but that will be spun as political fodder ahead of the 2020 election. Apparently, Pelosi never got that memo, either. Now, she’s stuck with a series of terrible decisions.
As Sean Hannity noted on his show last night, Pelosi has done nothing but embarrass herself with her failed impeachment gambit. She’s done worse than that, though. She’s actually lulled most of America into a state of impeachment tedium.
