Washington is stuck in a ditch
Donald Trump should not have asked the Ukrainian president to re-open that investigation into Hunter Biden. I could have written Volodymyr Zelenskiy a letter as a concerned citizen who lives in the next state over from Biden Jr.
Any one of us who are not running against his father in the next presidential elections could have done that, although the likelihood of getting a response is on par with my getting the last rose as the Bachelorette.
Still, it would not have kicked the country into a constitutional crisis.
When Donald Trump did it, the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (Jerry Nadler, Adam Schiff, Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi riding side saddle) mounted their ponies and started off on the race to impeachment.
As of the moment, there are a lot of questions as to whether there is any legitimacy to their race.
We will not know for weeks, or even months, if what the president did constitutes grounds for finding “high crimes and misdemeanors.” But the die have been cast, and the Rubicon is very choppy these days.
As someone who is neither a #NeverTrumper nor a pure MAGA loyalist, I try to look at this from a non-partisan perspective.
So far, we’ve heard from GOP members who are extremely muffled in their criticism, or who have decided to keep quiet altogether.
Pennsylvania Sen. Pat Toomey, a man I greatly admire, has weighed in by saying the phone call was “inappropriate,” but he doesn’t think it’s a basis for impeachment. Utah Sen. Mitt Romney, for whom I voted in 2012 and who has carved out his spot as “The Republican Who Doesn’t Like Trump,” has said that the phone call was “deeply troubling” (triggering the expected backlash from the president.)
Nebraska Sen. Ben Sasse, who is up for re-election, has said that Republicans “should not just circle the wagons,” and Ohio Sen. Rob Portman with a defeated air said “it was exactly what I expected,” which means he expected Trump to do inappropriate things.
Obviously, none of these comments are ringing indictments against the leader of the Republican party, and it doesn’t approach the level of condemnation from Watergate-era Republicans against Richard Nixon, but I think I’ll cut them a break, given the reaction from Democrats.
From the beginning of the week, we have been treated to a Greek Tragedy in real time, with Democrats wailing and pulling out their hair and shredding their clothes.
I understand that it looks good for the cameras to show anger and outrage, and it plays well with the most anti-Trump progressive wings of their parties, but at the same time it is quite disenfranchising for most Americans who are not tied to one political party by an umbilical cord. I will acknowledge both anger and great disappointment with members of the GOP who seem to give Donald Trump a pass on even the most egregious acts.
That is as un-American as what the heat-seeking missiles of the Democrat party are doing this week, in their rush to stage an impeachment.
It is unsettling to see the barely-concealed glee with which some of them are prancing before the cameras while pretending to protect the constitution.
They lecture us about how we need to follow the rule of law. I’m all for that, except where were all of these outraged Democrats when Vice President Joe Biden was undermining the rule of law by urging the former president of the Ukraine to fire a prosecutor he didn’t like, or when three of their own US Senators wrote a letter to the Ukraine complaining about the closure of several investigations that would have helped with the Mueller investigation?
I don’t expect an answer, of course, it was all rhetorical.
My point is that while the GOP has been woefully incompetent in holding this administration accountable for its excesses and errors, the Democrats have been equally resistant to cleaning up their own obvious messes.
Adding insult to injury, they try and claim the moral high ground.
In D.C. these days, that would be more like standing in a ditch.