Ted Cruz, Rick Scott modify message in Spanish-language ads: ‘You do see some subtle manipulations’.
Damn hypocrites, using anything besides the country’s One True Official Language Ordained by God[sup]TM[/sup]. Why, they’re practicaly {attack of vapours} Liberals!
Interesting. And I bet there are more examples that just haven’t become public.
Win At Any Cost™ by the Republican Party.
I know it was brought up in the Pit but I see that this thread is lacking the transcript of the telephone session that took place yesterday. It’s only 11 pages long but it’s very entertaining.
If the president issues an executive order that deliberately orders personnel to ignore a Supreme Court ruling, the Democrats should impeach.
The articles of impeachment, at this stage, would be very, very long—and controversial even among Democrats. (And, worse, we’re still at the stage in which a Senate acquittal that would strengthen Trump is inevitable.)
How about a nice clean targeted Motion to Censure, with language that explicitly states that the Executive has attempted to violate the Constitution by ordering officers of the government to ignore a Supreme Court ruling?
Force Republicans on the record on this matter: are they fine with this particular violation of the Constitution? If so, they must stand up in public and say so.
I’m generally opposed to impeachment when we’re talking about his other “crimes,” but if he crosses that line and defies a court order, I don’t think Democrats have a choice. I mean, they obviously do have a choice, but it would be a bad idea to let that go unchallenged without the stiffest of possible challenges. Allowing the president to ignore Court rulings is something the House has to stand against. I’m not saying they should impeach if he tries to challenge the law in court again, but if he sues screw the courts, then the House has to throw down the gauntlet.
Have a read through this article, and note how the numbers change after Articles of Impeachment went forward. Also note that Nixon’s popularity among Republicans didn’t begin to drop until after those articles.
Also, I still disagree that acquittal in the Senate will strengthen Trump. Perhaps it will in his base, the hardcore MAGAts, but others will see the naked partisanship of that acquital, just as they saw it in the very existence of the impeachment of Clinton. It may sway a few independents, it will excite the thrillseekers who like a good political show, and it will energize the progressives of the left.
Force Republicans to take a stand with yet another toothless gesture, or force them with Articles of Impeachment and then trial in the Senate?
Agreed.
I know people are probably perplexed at why I would so adamantly argue against impeachment before and reverse myself now, but this would be different. Presidents cheat on their taxes, cheat on their wives, cheat in business, cheat in politics, and do a lot of other shit ordinary people can’t get away with – accept that as one of the perks of that job. Just don’t fuck up life for the average American and you’re probably good. But the moment the president starts acting like a king, that’s where Congress must draw the line - no exceptions. Impeaching the president to protect the Constitution’s separation of powers is abso-fucking-lutely worth it.
It doesn’t matter what Mitch McConnell’s Senate votes it down or not – force him to vote it down. Force Republicans to go on record and explain in a long and protracted, nationally-televised debate why the president can just ignore court rulings that he doesn’t like. “So you’re saying if Courts strike down gun control legislation, a democratic government has the option of ignoring it?” Sure, the MAGAbots would say “Heh! Heh! Y’all aint’ gittin another democrat president, heh heh!” But I doubt independents would be down with that.
This would be also one way to unite the Democratic party. It would also push a lot of centrists away not only from the president but from the party that defends him. A lot of people don’t friggin care about the Mueller investigation or Trump’s taxes – mainly because they don’t necessarily understand it. But I think Trump acting like a king and not a president is something that a lot of people would get.
Irrespective of that, however, the fact that impeachment could fail isn’t a reason not to impeach. Allowing a president to not only ignore a court ruling from the highest court in the land, but also to cast doubt on the census process itself is something Democrats simply cannot tolerate. If they go down, they have to go down swinging.
Looks like Barr and Trump are going to just ignore the Supreme Court ruling, issue an executive order putting the question on the census, and dare the American public to give a shit.
We’ve disagreed on the when and how of impeachment, but if they go through with this, I’ll disagree a lot less.
This is not just a constitutional crisis, but a political crisis - one that could replay over and over again for years to come. Doubts over legitimacy of the census will inevitably lead to doubts over the legitimacy of elections. Not that the specter of political illegitimacy has stopped Republicans before, but this would represent a president essentially dressing up judicial nullification, which is constitutionally invalid, as a legitimate function of the Executive Branch. This is where the proverbial shit hits the proverbial fan.
At the very least this should raise questions about impeaching Barr.
I’m less opposed to impeaching Barr than Trump, because having the Senate vote to acquit him (as it is likely to do) will be less harmful than will having the Senate vote to acquit Trump. Acquitting Trump cuts off for all practical purposes any chance of holding hearings and investigation of Trump. How can you investigate a guy who’s been declared innocent of wrongdoing?
And for the purpose of the 2020 election, the House needs to keep investigations and hearings of Trump on the front burner, pretty much continuously. (There’s no shortage of justifications for so doing!) Impeach-then-acquit Trump, and all that comes to a screeching halt. Gloriously-Vindicated Trump sails to victory on November 3.
Public-opinion-wise, the impeachment-and-acquittal of Trump will be a disaster for all who hope to get rid of Trump as soon as possible. The impeachment-and-acquittal of Barr----not so much. And it will serve the get-Republicans-on-the-record goal admirably. Get them on the record supporting this subversion of the Constitution. Get them on the record saying it’s perfectly fine to ignore the Supreme Court!
Get them on the record.
The WaPo article contains some serious errors in reasoning.
Embedded in calls to “impeach now” are many assumptions that are extremely shaky.
The main one has to do with beliefs about the mass of voters. It’s a natural human failing to assume that ‘most people are basically like me,’ and in this context the false beliefs include:
[ul]
[li]‘most people are paying as much attention to the current political scene as I am’[/li][li]‘most people react to events of the day as I do’[/li][li]‘most people value the same things I do, and would be as horrified when a president defies a court ruling, instead of being indifferent, or even cheering that defiance’[/li][li]‘most people are as capable of interpreting and understanding the abstractions of political positions and actions as I am’[/li][li]‘most people who see a President defy a court ruling will interpret that just the way that I do, taking the news of the day and translating it into the conclusion that he is acting like a king–they won’t interpret it any other way, such as ‘boring political stuff that means nothing to my daily life’—they’ll interpret it exactly as I do’[/li][li]‘most people are as conversant with the offenses committed by this Administration as I am’[/li][li]‘most people are as certain that those offenses must be punished as I am’[/li][/ul]
…and so on.
In this specific case we see equally-unsupported assumptions such as:
[ul]
[li]despite the fact that this isn’t the 1970s—a time with no Internet and only four channels and no video games (and on and on)—people will be paying the same amount of attention to Congressional impeachment proceedings as people did in the 1970s, and[/li][li]the major networks and news channels will give full coverage to Congressional impeachment proceedings[/li][li]most Americans will watch, and will come to the conclusion that Trump must be removed[/li][/ul]
All these assumptions have one thing in common: they are highly unlikely to be true.
Additional problems with the ‘impeach now’ argument rest on the fallacious reasoning that “correlation is causation.” Of course it is not. The Greg Sargent piece (in the Washington Post—I like to warn readers that they are dealing with a fire-walled site, rather than surprising them with a blind link) states, on the topic of changes in independents’ views on impeaching Nixon:
The argument-from-authority Sargent offers is that Historian Julian Zelizer is the author of this claim, though Sargent is round-about enough in his language to create plausible deniability (should Zelizer protest).
(Sargent’s sophistical talents were noticed by more than one commenter: as one said, “Carefully left out: Republicans controlled neither the House nor the Senate at the time of Watergate.” As another noted, Sargent’s polling-based argument falls apart in that other recent historical precedent for impeaching a president: “Missing from this piece is the breakdown of polling results prior, during and after the Clinton impeachment.” [Comments on same page as the article.])
But let’s look at the argument. Sargent claims that the change in independents’ views on Nixon, from 18% in favor of impeachment in June 1973, to 47% in favor of removal in July 1974, to 55% in favor of removal* in August 1974, resulted from one and only one cause: House action. Specifically, the launch of impeachment hearings (May 1974) and the House committee approval of articles of impeachment in July 1974. That’s all it took to effect a substantial change in public opinion—according to Sargent.
In reality, the House actions were not the only factor affecting public opinion. Here are a few of the other relevant events and revelations that influenced views on Nixon:
JUNE 22-25 1973: 18% of independents support impeaching Nixon (per Gallup poll)
JULY 16 1973: existence of WH tapes revealed; they are subpoenaed by District Court Judge John Sirica
MARCH 1 1974: Indictments are handed down for Mitchell, Haldeman, Ehrlichman, and four others
APRIL 30 1974: 1,200+ pages of edited transcripts of Nixon tapes are released
MAY 9 1974: House Judiciary Committee launches impeachment hearings.
JULY 24 1974: Supreme Court rules Nixon must hand over the original, unedited tapes he’s been concealing.
JULY 27-30 1974: House Committee on the Judiciary approves 3 articles of impeachment
AUGUST 5 1974: The “Smoking Gun”: transcripts of 6-23-72 conversations showing Nixon involved in the cover-up.
AUGUST 2-5 1974: 55% of independents now support impeaching Nixon (per Gallup poll)**
Sargent, conveniently for his argument, neglects to mention any of these factors shaping the evolution of Americans’ thinking about Nixon and impeachment. Sargent asserts that House action was all it took. That this argument is fallacious seems obvious.
A fairly-constructed argument would mention all the other factors impacting public opinion. And that, of course, would destroy the claim that all we need now to get a majority of independents (if not Americans) behind impeachment, is for the House to start an official inquiry.
The facts simply do not support that view.
*The relevant question in the Gallup poll, as cited in the Sargent article, changed from “should be impeached” (June1973) to “actions serious enough to warrant being removed” by July and August 1974.
**Timeline is partially taken from The Watergate Scandal: A Timeline | HISTORY
There will be no impeachment of Barr without impeachment of Trump first because the Republicans are in on the gag – gagging and duck taping lady liberty’s mouth shut.
No, if they proceed with this, then there has to be an impeachment because this is laying the foundation to use the census to undermine our republican form of government. There is no choice. Not censure, but impeachment. Yes, it could still fail, but the case that has to be made is that the Republicans are trying to deny voters in all states fair representation in their national government. This could even conceivably backfire in typically red states such as Arizona, Texas, and Florida. Sure, the assumption is that it won’t, but it could, and this is something that should be pointed out. Besides that, make it known that Republicans are trying to assert that the president, whose approval ratings are rarely above 45% and underwater in key swing states, is claiming to be this all-powerful institution that can decide which laws he will or will not follow.
I resisted the idea of impeachment over Mueller and Russia because people didn’t generally understand it, and we’d already had a 2-year investigation into the matter that Mueller himself never conclusively attempted to resolve. This is different - like way different. It does not matter a damn whether the Democrats succeed in getting him impeached. Saying “Fuck you” to separation of powers is much, much easier for the general public to understand and the Republicans will look mighty goddamn corrupt trying to defend it. By all means make them defend it. Make them defend on record the position that the Trump can decide whether or not he wishes to adhere to the rulings of the Court majority - a majority picked by Republican presidents and Republican Senates. In doing so the Senate would also be essentially giving away all the power it has to oppose Trump on trade, on foreign policy, and on anything else they occasionally disagree because they realize he’s occasionally that unhinged.
What’s your basis for believing this?
It’s admittedly an assumption and not necessarily proven fact, but I think it’s fair to say that it’s easier to understand that an executive order that goes against a court ruling that was just issued, that is deliberately defying a court ruling. The strategy of appealing directly to the Supreme Court while Trump rolls out the executive order makes that part obvious – skipping the lower courts so that they can’t issue injunctions and orders to cease and desist.
Whether people actually care that the president violates the Constitution…well on that front I can’t make any bets, unfortunately. We’ve tolerated an awful lot lately.
Regardless, though, I don’t see any point in gaming out chess moves if Trump’s plan is to simply take his hand and swat our chess pieces off the board, which is what this latest move is an attempt to do. This is the clearest indication yet that he has absolutely no intentions of leaving office in January of 2021, regardless of the outcome. This is the clearest indication yet that driving Trump from power may require more than just defeating him in the election. This is the clearest indication yet that the American form of democracy is in grave condition.
If Trump issues the order, what law will Barr have broken?
Impeachment doesn’t have to have anything to do with the law.
But he must still be charged with something, so I’ll rephrase. What could Barr be charged with?