Dumb in every way, but lots of grassroots liberals feel like this so go figure that House members are starting to mimic them. CNN’s keeping a running list, in fact, although only a few have gone as far as Al Green has.
President Trump has committed an act for which he should be charged by the U.S. House of Representatives. The act is the obstruction of a lawful investigation of the President’s campaign ties to Russian influence in his 2016 Presidential Election…
· The President fired the F.B.I. Director overseeing a lawful investigation of the President’s campaign ties to Russian influence in the President’s 2016 Election.
· The President acknowledged he considered the investigation when he fired the F.B.I. Director.
· The President made the F.B.I. Director the subject of a threatening tweet – “James Comey better hope that there are no ‘tapes’ of our conversations before he starts leaking to the press.”…
Our mantra should be “I. T. N. – Impeach Trump Now.”
Andrew McCabe, the acting director of the Bureau, testified a few days ago that there’s been no effort to impede the FBI’s investigation to date and the Bureau wouldn’t tolerate it if there was. In last week’s NBC interview, Trump said, “If Russia did anything, I want to know that,” and mused that he “might even lengthen out the investigation” under the new director. His chief concern, he claimed, was that the probe be done “absolutely properly,” which he thought couldn’t happen under Comey. And he still has a chance to appoint someone as Comey’s replacement whom both sides respect and trust to pursue the investigation diligently. If you brought a resolution of impeachment to the floor of the House with facts that weak in support of obstruction, you might not get a single Republican vote and you’d certainly get nowhere near 67 in the Senate. So, as a substantive matter, why raise the idea now? At least wait to see if Trump appoints a political hack to replace Comey and the Russia probe starts getting slow-walked.
As a political matter, it’s hard to believe that Democrats running around screaming about impeachment helps them more than it does the GOP. Partisanship being what it is, the more serious Dems seem to be about trying to remove Trump, the more it’ll catalyze a wagon-circling backlash on the right to defend him even among Republicans whose support for him has softened some. “The Resistance” is already near peak motivation for the midterms; Republicans are … not. Compare the share of GOPers who strongly approve of Trump to the number of Democrats who strongly disapprove of him:
In early February, 75 percent of Republicans strongly approved of Trump versus 82 percent of Democrats who strongly disapproved. Republican support has weakened while Democratic opposition is steady — but toss a cherry bomb like impeachment into the fray and righties who are wary of the president might instinctively scramble to protect him. Besides, some of the alleged support for impeachment might itself be softer than it appears. When left-leaning PPP asked about it in late March, they found 44 percent in favor of removing Trump versus 45 percent opposed — an ominously even division. How many people who claim to support the idea as a gassy expression of general rejectionism of Trump, though, would support an actual showdown in Congress over it, especially knowing that removal by the Senate is near-impossible? How many Dems who back it on principle would be talked out of their support by more gun-shy liberals wary of a backlash a la what the GOP suffered when it came after Bill Clinton? You don’t need to say the I-word to turn the midterms into a referendum on Trump. That’s already baked in.
Here’s Green blathering about it today.
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