It looks like the Democrats finally found some use for the Constitution -- as a convenient prop in their impeachment charade. Thursday, when Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) announced that she was "prayerfully" proceeding with the formal charges, she painted herself as a modern Thomas Jefferson, insisting that it was "with allegiance to our founders" that she was pressing this case. Her real motives were a lot less grandiose, summed up later in the reporters' questioning, but equally applicable to Trump: "Don't mess with me," she snarled.
If Nancy Pelosi was trying to wrap herself in the Declaration of Independence, she failed, the Boston Herald's Joe Battenfield declares. Her speech was so "silly" and "sanctimonious" that it suggests "Democrats are flailing and flailing in their bid to get the American people on board the impeachment train... President Trump is a lot of things," he writes, "but he's no King George III."
Congressman Mark Green (R-Tenn.) who, like every other Republican, watched this jaw-dropping spectacle unfold, couldn't help but notice the hypocrisy. "She accused the president basically of trying to be a king [while she] leveraged the entire U.S. House of Representatives for 35 days without even taking a vote. I mean, she initiated an impeachment of the president of the United States on her own, as if she was some kind of queen." Andrew McCarthy over at NRO agreed. "Democrats say Trump exploited his constitutional power for political purposes, but how is that different from what they are doing now?"
Then, of course, Pelosi invoked religion because she couldn't invoke proof. "Democrats, too, are prayerful, and we will proceed in a manner worthy of our oath of office to support and defend the Constitution of the United States from all enemies foreign and domestic, so help us God." So help us God, indeed, Battenfield mused.
For House members like Green, it's a frustrating situation all around. After all, this is the same Nancy Pelosi who told the Washington Post in March, "I'm not for impeachment." It's too "divisive," she argued. Too dangerous. "And he's just not worth it." Well, something must have changed, Green points out.
"Speaker Pelosi at the beginning of the year said, 'It needs to be bipartisan. There needs to be proof -- real evidence. And we don't have any proof at all. It's ridiculous. It's a farce. It's a sham. It's almost as if these Democrats seem to think that the 63 million people who elected this president to determine the foreign policy, the United States -- they're irrelevant. 'We know better. We're smarter than everybody else. And we're going to proceed this way.' I just think it's unconscionable."
What happens when there's a Democratic president? (Granted, if the Left keeps this up, it might be awhile, but the lingering question remains.) As Pelosi accidentally hinted in her press conference, her real beef with Donald Trump isn't about Ukraine, it's about his policies. "I think he's cruel," she argued, "when he doesn't deal with helping our 'Dreamers'... I think he's in denial about the climate crisis." Then realizing she was making an ideological case, not a criminal one, she got back on message. "However that's about the election... This is about the Constitution of the United States."
But the reality is, it isn't about the Constitution. Democrats are using impeachment as a political tool. Pelosi's comments make clear what most of us have suspected all along: the grounds of the Democrats' impeachment is nothing more than disagreement with the president's agenda. That's a shocking redefining of terms -- one that Nancy Pelosi's conveniently rediscovered new friends, the Founders, would have taken as a threat to our republic's very fabric. We can't lower the standards of "high crimes and misdemeanors" to differences of opinion on issues like immigration or the environment. As constitutional professor (and open Trump critic) Jonathan Turley warned, "That does not bode well for future presidents who are working in a country often sharply and, at times, bitterly divided."
Or for the future of 2020 Democrats, Green pointed out. While they chase this obsession, they're actually solidifying Republicans' support "for the president and against this insane process." People on the fence, Independents especially, are souring on the Left's strategy -- and fast. How long until they sour on the party pursuing it?
