It should be obvious what the Democratic Party’s game plan is now, especially since Robert Mueller’s testimony yesterday dashed hopes that he would blow wind into the limp sails of the SS Overthrow The Republican. Instead, the ostensible Special Prosecutor made the case for “high crimes and misdemeanors” look weaker and more contrived than before. One by one, the weak, weaker and weakest “resistance” plans to remove President Trump have fallen into various states of hopelessness and ruin, and the bitter-enders are now resorting to denial or impeachment rationalizations unmoored to anything at all, like this guy, who says that “history demands” an impeachment. [Pointer: Zoltar]
The Democrats will just keep the impeachment fires burning until the election, hoping that 1) one of the horrible candidates Democrats get to choose from will defeat Trump, which looks like a Hail Mary at this point (but who knows what the President will tweet next) or 2) the Democrats will take control of the Senate, and 3) the public will tolerate them spending another 4 years trying to overthrow an elected President without getting disgusted and turning the House back over to the GOP. Does this sound rational and responsible to you? I wonder why it sounds reasonable to Democrats.
Meanwhile, I was beginning to think the Ethics Alarms list of coup theories had maxxed out at Q, plan #17. [ The most recent updated list is here] But somehow I knew, deep in my heart, that Rep. Adam Schiff, who has lied, puffed, exaggerated and grandstanded all manner of impeachment justifications that didn’t exist in fact or law, but somehow isn’t walking around Washington D.C. with his head in a bag, would be equal to the daunting task of coming up with a new plan. And so he has.
Perhaps anticipating the Mueller Meltdown, Schiff unveiled Plan R in his opening statement as Chair of the House Intelligence Committee. His theory? President Trump was “disloyal”:
“Disloyalty to country. Those are strong words. But how else are we to describe a presidential campaign which did not inform the authorities of a foreign offer of dirt on their opponent, which did not publicly shun it, or turn it away, but which instead invited it, encouraged it, and made full use of it? That disloyalty may not have been criminal. But disloyalty to country violates the very obligation of citizenship, our devotion to a core principle on which our nation was founded, that we, the people, not some foreign power that wishes us ill, we decide, who shall govern, us.”
Schiff then began to head into Cloud Cuckoo Land, a favorite spot of his, fulminating that Trump and his campaign’s leadership were driven by “money,” “greed” and “corruption,” and that Trump’s goal in running for president was not to win the election but to make money by building a “gleaming” Trump Tower in Moscow.
Right. Makes sense to me!
Then he concluded,
“But worst of all, worse than all the lies and the greed, is the disloyalty to country, for that too continues. When asked, ‘If the Russians intervene again, will you take their help, Mr. President?’ ‘Why not?’ was the essence of his answer. ‘Everyone does it.’ No, Mr. President, they don’t.”
This is another occasion where I am moved to quote the estimable Sidney Wang, from Neil Simon’s “Murder By Death”…
To be precise, Schiff, who really is a disgrace to his party, his state, and the House, overlooked several very important points:
1. What constitutes loyalty is a matter of subjective judgment. I would say, for example, that it is acting in the best interest of the nation to discover undisclosed misconduct by a Presidential candidate and her party, which is what the hack of the DNC computers revealed. By what logic is it better for the public not to know about DNC cheating and Clinton Foundation influence peddling?
On the other side of the loyalty coin is a political party deliberately undermining an elected President and trying to overturn an election for three years. I regard that as flagrant disloyalty, and opposing it a patriotic duty. Perhaps that’s why, as Schiff says, that there is no law requiring “loyalty.” Such a law would be unconstitutional, like, oh, just to pick a random example out of the air, impeaching a President without any Constitutional grounds to do so.
2. Even if we accepted Schiff’s manufactured loyalty theory, the conduct he is talking about did not occur while Trump was President. The impeachment clause has consistently been interpreted to mean that a President must have committed “high crimes and misdemeanors” while in office. Otherwise, Congress could impeach an elected President for being “disloyal” in college.
3. What does Schiff think was the Russian assistance that Trump made “full use of”? There is no evidence that Russia provided any intelligence to the campaign. Is he saying that the hypothetical votes that may have been moved his way by social media-planted Soviet trolling constituted active collaboration with the Russians since Trump accepted them? If not that wacky theory, what is Schiff claiming? What was the tangible assistance that Trump invited,encouraged, and used? There wasn’t any. Schiff is just making stuff up, though to be fair, the American public should be used to that by now.
4. Finally, it wasn’t Donald Trump who was responsible for stopping the Russian election interference. He had no power to do so. It was the President in 2016, Barack Obama, and we now know that he and his administration knew about the Russian efforts [Correction alert! The original read “Soviet.” Sixties flashback...] , and deliberately chose to do nothing. Obama had an oath to live up to. He had a real duty to intervene, not Schiff’s theoretical one he’s imposing on candidate Trump.
Plan R is stillborn crap.
Ethics Alarms 
If this is such a great argument, take it to the American people in 2020.
“But how else are we to describe a presidential campaign which did not inform the authorities of a foreign offer of dirt on their opponent, which did not publicly shun it, or turn it away, but which instead invited it, encouraged it, and made full use of it?”
According to this Mueller Report I’ve been hearing so much about, the Trump campaign never actually accepted any dirt from Russians. Some Russian agents reached out to the campaign at a couple of points, but didn’t make any inroads. Is he basing all of this off of Trump making that joke that one time?
Even better, the other side actually did get foreign help – Steele was British intelligence and supposedly got intel from Russian sources for his infamous dossier.
Well, why don’t we accept Schiff’s arguement? Any party that pays money to foreign intelligence assets to alter election results is guilty of disloyalty. So, any party that paid a British intelligence agent to forward money to Russian intelligence to concoct fake foreign intelligence for the swamp creatures in DC to use to influence and attempt to overturn an election is disloyal. Insert Dave Rubin voice,”I agree with that”.
Remember, Steele paid the GRU to create the dossier so it could be passed off as ‘foreign intelligence’. Apparently, the Russians poisoned several people in England to hide this fact from the Mueller investigation.
https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2019/03/the_trump_dossier_and_the_poisoning_of_sergei_skripal.html
Yes. That appears to be the case. What an ass Schiff is.
It’s nice to know that Schiff regards receiving dirt on Clinton from a foreign source as “disloyalty to the country.” Just a reminder that Clinton and her supporters regarded the presidency as a her royal prerogative.
Re: 4, I know the Democrats have been banging the old Cold War drums a lot, but I don’t think the Russians alleged to have interfered in the 2016 election were Soviets, though perhaps some of them used to be.
Re: Soviets. Oops.
Perhaps you meant to write “with a bag on his head” instead of “with his head in a bag”?
The latter sounds… rather final.
Make your own conclusions…
Jack
According to the talking heads over at MSNBC it is another Trump lie to say Obama did nothing to stop Russian meddling. They tell us he spoke to Putin about it. Did they have a beer summit too?
Today Scarborough called Mcconnell treasonous and named him Moscow Mitch for not allowing a billion dollars spending bill for election hardening from the Democrats.
Finally if it could be proved that these endless investigations are politically motivated are they not Hatch Act violations. Seems to me if Conways speech constitutes Hatch act violations so too should some of these over the top allegations aimed at Trump.
Oh, he spoke with him about it. Did he give him another cute little “Reset Button” too? Maybe a friendship bracelet this time?
He told him there would be more flexibility after the election…
my thought too…
If I recall his said “cut it out”. I bet Putin dropped to his knees and begged for forgiveness.
November 4, 2020 is growing ever more likely to be on par with April 12, 1861.
Part of the reason I believe this to be true is the resistance’s inability to move off of impeachment. What they are left with is whipping their proletariat into a violent frenzy to outright overthrow the duly elected.
The big lesson I have learned during the Trump presidency is that Democratic operatives and members of “The Swamp” are above the law. The amount of lawbreaking outlined by Clintons, a bevy of FBI agents, State Department employees, and Justice Department personnel that has gone completely uninvestigated, much less punished has made that completely clear. Anyone who opposes the elites will be crushed by the law. We see the rise of the third KKK with Antifa and other progressive groups attacking their political opponents with impunity because of the cooperation of a Democratic local government and local police.
As in the 1860’s and 1960’s we see the difference between free states and slave states. In slave states, individual liberty is severely curtailed legally and socially. We see the desire of the slave states to expand their influence through illegal immigration exclusively of people with undemocratic, repressive beliefs. As in the 1860’s and 1960’s, the distinction between free and slave is between Republican and Democrat. As in 1860’s and 1960’s, the slave states could bring superior individual votes, while free states had superior electoral votes.
This country cannot continue to be free with such a group of unelected elites running the country in defiance of elected authorities. They control the courts, the bureaucracy, and our entire educational system.* We will cease to be a free society soon, if we indeed still have one. Our Communist adversary’s quote that the US would have a Communist government in a few decades and wouldn’t even be aware of it may have already come true.
*I was looking in a college American History book lately and I was shocked by the number of facts that have changed since I took American History. One interesting one is that it is now widely taught that JFK won the popular vote over Nixon. Previously, the contemporary opinion (in the Congressional Record and others) was that Nixon won the popular vote. The current view counts all 11 votes of every voter in Alabama (where each voter voted for each of the 11 electors) and other reinterpretations to achieve a popular vote victory for JFK. I also learned that Truman ended segregation in the military (he actually refused, it was Eisenhower), and that the press along with Democratic presidents destroyed the KKK shortly after WWI!
Since just prior to the election in November 2016 (intentionally giving them the benefit of the doubt with that date) the political left has let the cat out of the bag and shown us that “they” are a collective herd of stupid people.
Yes, political left, I just wrote that you are a herd of stupid people and can’t be fixed.
If you happen to be a rare non-stupid modern day lefty and don’t like what I wrote, then use the brain you were given to FIX your own herd; bet you can’t do it, they’re irretrievably broken with reality.
Oh my God; that one belongs on the gut laugh leaderboard.
I really don’t think he realizes how ridiculous he sounds.
What an moron.
Now, if I wrote “What an moron,” I’d never hear the end of it…
Since they both basically mean “stupid”, I could have just as easily written imbecile but this time I actively chose moron.
I have plan “R”. After watching and reading the spin taking place following the Mueller hearings, I predict that plan “R” will be that Robert Mueller obviously wasn’t capable of conducting such a sweeping investigation, let alone of reaching a reasonable conclusion. The entire investigation is now null and void and a new Special Prosecutor should be appointed who can finish the job. The President will push back, tweet, etc., which will prove obstruction and justify impeachment.