• Welcome to OGBoards 10.0, keep in mind that we will be making LOTS of changes to smooth out the experience here and make it as close as possible functionally to the old software, but feel free to drop suggestions or requests in the Tech Support subforum!

Andrew Sullivan: Congress must move forward with impeachment

Newenglanddeac

Well-known member
Joined
May 1, 2011
Messages
13,135
Reaction score
390
All of this is an unprecedented series of impeachable offenses. It is a textbook definition of “high crimes and misdemeanors.” It is the story of a president assaulting the rule of law, attempting to manipulate the justice system, dangling pardons to induce perjury, and reflexively putting his own personal interests — or simply ego — before any interest of the country as a whole. Mueller openly states that his own investigation was thwarted by the president to the extent that the “the justice system’s integrity [was] threatened.” When a president openly threatens the integrity of the justice system, and says he has unlimited power to do so in the future, he not only can be impeached, he must be impeached.

I understand the prudential concerns about this. I share them. I worry about pushing Trump into outright insanity. And I worry that the contemporary GOP is all too happy to create a presidency — as long as it’s theirs — beyond the rule of law. Even though no previous impeachment process has ever engaged in the kind of assault on our entire system of government that we see now before us, the GOP will protect their cult leader. They are far gone. There will never be enough Republican votes to convict Trump in the Senate. But after this report’s summary and backup for what we have been witnessing in public for two years now, there is another consideration. What are the consequences of not impeaching?

They are, it seems to me, real and immediate. Trump now has a Justice Department run by a loyalist who believes in total executive supremacy, and who has just revealed himself as a man willing to lie and deceive and distort to please his master. Every official who might have restrained this president is gone. There are almost no heads of agencies, and no dissent in the Cabinet. The country is effectively being ruled by a monarch and his court. Foreign policy has been given to family members. The Fed is being rigged to remove professionals and install loyal toadies. The judiciary is being filled with judges who defer to presidential power in every circumstance. We have a president who only last week told his new acting DHS secretary, Kevin McAleenan, to break the law if necessary to stop asylum seekers from entering the country, and that he’d have his back and pardon him if he got into trouble. In any other time, that alone would demand impeachment. We know now, however, that this is just one instance of a clear pattern of lawlessness.

We also know that the president will put his personal ego above even an investigation of an assault by a foreign power against our democracy — a threat far graver than lying under oath about an affair or passively covering up a two-bit robbery (the cause of the last two impeachments). It is a declaration that this president will not stop that foreign meddling from happening again, and will be happy if it helps reelect him. This is, quite simply, intolerable. We have a president who is an instinctual criminal and liar, who threatens the integrity of our justice system and of our democratic elections, who is incapable of understanding the rule of law, backed by an attorney general who just outright distorted the findings of the special counsel.

What more do we need to know? To refuse to use the one weapon the Founders gave us to remove such a character from office is more than cowardice. It is complicity. It is a surrender to forces which aim to make the world safe for authoritarianism. It may not work. But if we acquiesce, pretend it isn’t happening, or look away, it cannot work. This disgusting man is not just a cancer in the presidency. His presidency is a cancer in our Constitution and way of life. How long do we let this metastasize even further? How long before we take a stand? Mueller has given us the road map. He has done his duty. Now it’s our turn to do ours: “to support and defend the Constitution and laws of the United States of America against all enemies, foreign and domestic.”

There is no qualification in that oath of citizenship.

Impeach Trump now.

http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2019...?utm_medium=s1&utm_source=fb&utm_campaign=nym
 
Impeachment will only help Trump consolidate power unless Republicans remove him from office.

I’m really getting tired of conservatives like Sullivan actively trying to set up the Democrats to fail. If they want Trump to be punished, they need to pressure Republicans to do it.
 
Impeachment will only help Trump consolidate power unless Republicans remove him from office.

I’m really getting tired of conservatives like Sullivan actively trying to set up the Democrats to fail. If they want Trump to be punished, they need to pressure Republicans to do it.

How was McConnell involved in the scheme?
 
Impeachment will only help Trump consolidate power unless Republicans remove him from office.

I’m really getting tired of conservatives like Sullivan actively trying to set up the Democrats to fail. If they want Trump to be punished, they need to pressure Republicans to do it.

Yeah I don’t know the best course of action here. And I agree that the GOP should be responsible for cleaning up the mess they made but we all know they will just blame Obama and the Democrats because they refuse to take responsibility for anything. At the same time, you can’t just let Trump walk from this...his power will only grow if Congress and the public allow him to take a dump all over the constitution and get away with it. Censuring him might be the best option...it may feel symbolic but so is impeachment without a conviction in the Senate. At least with a censure, the Democrats can say his actions are unacceptable without the risk of being rebuked by the GOP controlled Senate.
 
As I've said for most of the past two years, don't impeach Trump. Keep putting out the truth of who he is and how Republicans have turned a blind eye to this racist traitor. Then, the day after a new POTUS has an AG, arrest him, his family and their lackeys for their crimes.
 
Yeah censure is probably the best course of action. Get Republicans on record supporting this.
 
I don’t see what censure would accomplish. It takes 60 votes in the Senate, which ain’t happening. It requires a simple majority in the House, which Dems could get. But Trump would just use that to rally his base, since it would all be the Dems doing. And there are no legal implications to a censure.

The only chance for for censure to have my meaning would be for a significant number of Pubs to vote fo it.
 
Democrats have to impeach or else nothing matters. It’s their job. Fuck optics. Let it play out how it plays out.
 
Optics are everything. Nobody who thinks Trump was exonerated will change their minds after impeachment proceedings.

Congress is too partisan for impeachment to matter anymore unless it’s a Democrat in office because Democrats would impeach and remove someone who deserved it.
 
Bring out all the pieces of Trump's criminality. Don't jump into it.
 
Optics are everything. Nobody who thinks Trump was exonerated will change their minds after impeachment proceedings.

Congress is too partisan for impeachment to matter anymore unless it’s a Democrat in office because Democrats would impeach and remove someone who deserved it.

That doesn’t matter. It didn’t hurt Republicans to impeach Clinton for a blowjob.
 
Because Americans don’t make Republicans pay the price for corruption and incompetence. But they make Democrats pay the price for nothing.
 
If Trump wins re-election after surviving impeachment then he was going to get re-elected anyway. Who is going to to sit through an impeachment of this jackass even a failed impeachment and be more likely to vote for him?
 
If only the Republican controlled House had voted to censure Obama every day, think how different things would have been.
 
If Trump wins re-election after surviving impeachment then he was going to get re-elected anyway. Who is going to to sit through an impeachment of this jackass even a failed impeachment and be more likely to vote for him?


i think it is about getting all of the dirt on Trump out and into the media. republicans will not read or pay attention to the report unless they do this, even if it doesn't work. once the information is out, some rubes will still vote for him. those people don't matter, they will vote for him no matter what he does.
 
Democrats have to impeach or else nothing matters. It’s their job. Fuck optics. Let it play out how it plays out.

This. Approach is to begin the investigations, get what Trump did in front of the people who don't follow this stuff as closely and haven't read the report, and then move forward with impeachment and make republicans own their moral failings.
 
Back
Top