Editorial pages are responding to the impeachment of President Donald Trump by the House.
New York Times
On Wednesday evening, the House of Representatives impeached the president of the United States. A magnificent and terrible machine engineered by the founders, still and silent through almost all of American history, has for only the third time in 231 years shifted into motion, to consider whether Congress must call a president to account for abuse of power.
So why does it all seem so banal? The outcome so foreordained?
Most people say they know what’s going to happen, and who are we to say they’re wrong? The House voted to impeach Donald Trump by a party-line vote, with the exception of three Democrats representing Trump-friendly districts who voted against at least one article of impeachment. In the next month or two, the Senate will almost surely acquit him, also on a party-line vote.
It isn’t supposed to be this way. There’s plenty of blame to go around for the intense — really, infantilizing — degree of polarization that has overwhelmed American politics across the past 40 years. But the nihilism of this moment — the trashing of constitutional safeguards, the scorn for facts, the embrace of corruption, the indifference to historical precedent and to foreign interference in American politics — is due principally to cowardice and opportunism on the part of Republican leaders who have chosen to reject their party’s past standards and positions and instead follow Donald Trump, all the way down.
It’s a lot to ask of Republicans to insist on holding their own leader accountable, just as that was a lot to expect of Democrats during the Clinton impeachment inquiry. But while many Democrats then criticized President Bill Clinton and some voted to impeach him, Republican lawmakers would not breathe a word against Mr. Trump on Wednesday.
Instead, they competed with one another to invoke the most outlandish metaphor of evil — from the attack on Pearl Harbor to the crucifixion of Jesus Christ — and suggest that Mr. Trump is enduring even worse.
Senate Republicans are preparing to follow the example of their House colleagues, though many know better. Not so very long ago, several of them — including Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio, even the majority leader, Mitch McConnell — warned that Donald Trump was wrong for the country. Lindsey Graham memorably called Mr. Trump “a race-baiting, xenophobic, religious bigot†who was “unfit for office.†Now these senators seem eager to endorse the very sort of behavior they feared.
It is not too much to wonder how much of this cynicism and betrayal of principle any democracy can handle.
Every president from George Washington onward has been accused of misconduct of one kind or another, and many have faced calls for their impeachment. But Congress has resorted to the ultimate remedy so rarely because of the unspoken agreement that it should be reserved for only the most egregious and inexcusable offenses against the national interest.
Mr. Trump himself drew this distinction in 2008, arguing that President George W. Bush should have been impeached for lying about the reasons for the Iraq war, while at the same time rejecting the Republicans’ impeachment of Mr. Clinton for lying about sex as “nonsense,†done for something “totally unimportant.â€
Washington Post
THE HOUSE of Representatives’ impeachment of President Trump on Wednesday was proper and necessary. Mr. Trump withheld a White House meeting and U.S. military aid in an attempt to force Ukraine’s president to aid his reelection campaign. This was a gross abuse of his office that Congress could not allow to go unpunished. Nor could it acquiesce in Mr. Trump’s stonewalling a constitutionally authorized inquiry with a blanket refusal to cooperate with lawful subpoenas for documents and the testimony of senior aides.
Whether or not a Senate trial leads to his conviction and removal from office, Mr. Trump has deservedly suffered an indictment imposed on only two previous American presidents. The two articles of impeachment reinforce essential, and what should be self-evident, norms of our democracy: that presidents cannot use their powers to extort political favors from foreign governments, and that they cannot comprehensively reject congressional checks. That Mr. Trump denied all wrongdoing made the House action only more necessary.
Wall Street Journal
House Democrats voted Wednesday evening to impeach Donald Trump but, media high-fives aside, what have they accomplished? They have failed to persuade the country; they have set a new, low standard for impeaching a President; Mr. Trump will be acquitted in the Senate; and Democrats may have helped Mr. Trump win re-election. Congratulations to The Resistance.
Democrats Nancy Pelosi and Jerrold Nadler have said in the past that impeachment must be bipartisan to be credible, and they have achieved their goal—against impeachment. In the actual vote, two Democrats voted against both articles and a third voted with them against one. New Jersey Rep. Jeff Van Drew voted no and may switch to the GOP. All Republicans voted against impeachment.
The impeachment press will deride the GOP as either afraid of Donald Trump or moral sellouts. But note that even the 20 GOP Members who are retiring from the House and not running for another office voted against impeachment. GOP Members like Peter King (N.Y.), Jim Sensenbrenner (Wis.) and Will Hurd (Texas) have been unafraid to break with party leaders or Presidents in the past.
The problem isn’t GOP consciences, it’s the weak and dishonest Democratic case for impeachment. One issue is the unfair House process. Democrats refused GOP witness requests in the Intelligence Committee, denied the GOP a hearing day in the Judiciary Committee, and rushed the impeachment debate and vote. They claim impeachment is a serious, solemn moment but then sprinted to judgment to meet the political needs of swing-district Members who want it over fast.
On the substance, Democrats have taken an episode of Mr. Trump’s reckless foreign-policy judgment and distorted it into broad claims of bribery and extortion. The evidence of weakness is that their own articles of impeachment include no allegations of specific crimes.
Instead they watered them down to “abuse of power†and obstruction of Congress. The first is so general that the majority can define it to be anything. Impeachment doesn’t require a criminal offense, but the virtue of including a violation of law is that specific actions can be measured against it. That is why every previous impeachment included charges of specific violations of law.
This time Democrats have pulled a legal bait and switch. First they alleged an illegal quid pro quo. After doing focus groups with voters, they switched to bribery and extortion. Then they dropped those in the formal articles of impeachment, only to reassert them again on Monday in a 658-page Judiciary Committee document justifying impeachment. Can’t they at least be honest enough to charge Mr. Trump with the specific acts they claim he committed?
In their other Judiciary staff document on the history of impeachment, Democrats cited with approval the Republican impeachment of Andrew Johnson. They claimed that while the articles of impeachment cited Johnson’s violation of the Tenure of Office Act, Republicans were really impeaching him for undermining Reconstruction.
This is a giveaway that Democrats are impeaching Mr. Trump not for Ukraine, but because they believe he is simply unfit to be President. Democratic Rep. Adam Schiff has been explicit in justifying impeachment to prevent Mr. Trump from being able to “cheat in one more election†in 2020—a pre-emptive impeachment.
Where is that in the Constitution? Democrats are defining impeachment down to a tool of Congressional ascendancy that will threaten any President of the opposite party who becomes unpopular.
I will add more as I find more notable responses.
Looks like no one gives a damn what the press says. With good reason.
I’m sorry, have to copy and paste this: Guess who?
“If you turned on cable network news today, you would think [Trump’s] our president because of some combination of Russia, racism, Facebook, Hillary Clinton and emails all mixed together,” Yang said. “But Americans around the country know different. We blasted away 4 million manufacturing jobs that were primarily based in Ohio, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Missouri.”
He added, to applause: “What we have to do, is we have to stop being obsessed over impeachment … and start actually digging in and solving the problems that got Donald Trump elected in the first place.”
The problem for both parties is that they can’t solve “the problems that got Donald Trump elected in the first place” just with subsidies and/or tax cuts. It will take knowledge, acumen, and attention and all of those are in short supply in today’s Congress. And they will be fought every step of the way by those for whom curbing climate change by continuing de-industrialization of the United States is the first priority.
“It will take knowledge, acumen, and attention and all of those are in short supply in today’s Congress.â€
Dave (and I’m serious here, not just mixing it up on the blog site with snark) when was it ever so? Perhaps a dozen times in the last 100 years? Maybe. That’s a significant piece of legislation every 8-10 years. We need to rest, not become more active.
Government is too big, therefore too intrusive and powerful, and therefore politicians and bureaurocrats are too able to profit from it. What you desire is what we all desire. But it’s impossible in the environment that was set up by all the people of a government-as-solution bent. Human nature precludes it. We had firewalls in the Constitution, Bill of Rights and the Fourth Estate. They are under assault by an overactive judiciary and power mad politicians supported by a media now of like mind. The ends justify the means.
No one should be surprised at where we are. Expecting anything different, especially from intelligent and thoughtful people, not only disappoints, but numbs my mind. Expecting the fox to guard the henhouse brings us to the bizarre.
Guarneri:
Never before in the history of the Republic have lawmakers wanted to expand the scope of the federal government so much from so large a base. This time really is different.