
This hilarious episode pushed itself ahead of two other posts because its almost too good to be true, and by good, I mean “Yecchh!”
Let’s begin with the Republican House majority, led by jerks like Rep. Matt Gaetz, forcing Speaker Kevin McCarthy to begin an impeachment inquiry against President Biden. This is incompetent, irresponsible and unethical. To begin with, it’s a waste of time and the public’s attention, which is too divided and limited already. Second, as the GOP proved the last time it executed a futile impeachment, it is more likely to lose votes than to gain them. Third, there is no chance of conviction in the split Senate, zero. If the impeachment is supposed to be some kind of an official rebuke, it won’t be seen as one or taken as one, so the mere impeachment itself will have no substantive consequence or significance. Finally, Republicans impeaching Biden will look like revenge and “tit-for-tat” rather than responsible statesmanship, because it is revenge to a great extent.
Next come the Democrats and their news media agents screaming that there aren’t constitutional grounds for impeachment. I think there are, but it doesn’t matter: the Democrats killed impeachment as a useful Constitutional tool of democracy deader than a frozen mackerel when it concocted two unjustified and purely political impeachments of Donald Trump. There was no impeachable high crime with the first, and the Democrats were so determined to slap Trump before he was out the door that they didn’t even follow due process with the second. Both were obviously partisan, and since members of the party and its allies had been advocating the impeachment of Trump for something literally before he served a day in office, there was no way either impeachment could be objectively viewed as legitimate.
Ethics Alarms has pointed out too many times since Phony Impeachment #1 that the Democrats have guaranteed not only that their next President—Biden, unfortunately—would be impeached as soon as the GOP had control of the House, but that every President hereafter would probably be impeached when the opposing party has a House majority in an endless cycle of payback. Yes, somebody should be standing up for the importance of legitimate impeachments, but the Democrats forfeited that privilege when they broke the system. (What? I thought Trump was the one who threatened constitutional government by defying “democratic norms”!) They are complaining that there aren’t proper grounds to impeach their President? This is as perfect an example of Ethics Estoppel as I can imagine. Democrats cannot make such an argument, not without provoking mockery and contempt. They asked for it, and now, having guaranteed that it would arrive as ordered, they are whining about insufficient evidence.
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