'China's Bitch Mitch' — Statement After Trump's Acquittal (VIDEO)

AoSHQ has some choice words about some conservative "cucks," including "China's Bitch" Mitch McConnel. 

See, "Trump Acquitted in Impeachment Farce; Seven (Soon to be Ex-) Republicans Vote to Convict; Establishment Shill and Chinese Agent Mitch McConnell Votes to Acquit, But Then Openly Calls for Trump to be Prosecuted/Persecuted with Further Criminal Show-Trials."

The "cucks" at Hot Air also come in for some hilarious thrashing as well.

Good times, lol.

Lisa Murkowski Readies to Face Impeachment Vote Fallout (VIDEO)

As I was saying earlier, some of the Republicans who voted to convict might find their voters back home less than pleased.

Behold, already, the case of Alaska Senator Lisa Murkowski, who'll face her constituents in 2022.

At Politico, "Up in '22, Murkowski readies to face impeachment vote fallout."

Trump Acquitted in Democrats' 'Snap' Impeachment: Seven G.O.P Senators Break With Former President in Second Sham Retaliation Bid to Punish Trump and His Supporters (VIDEO)

I've had CNN on this afternoon, and while it's still early, I can tell you, the folks over there are absolutely crushed that Trump wasn't convicted. 

And the seven Republican senators who voted to convict didn't do themselves any favors. G.O.P. Sen. Bill Cassidy has already been censured by the Louisiana Republican Party, so he's lucky he was just reelected to his Senate seat this last November, since he'll at least have six long years for his constituents to "forgive" him for his treason to the Trump cause. 

And no doubt some of the others Republicans who voted to convict will sooner or later pay the price for siding with the demonic Democrats in this farce of an impeachment.

In any case, FWIW, at the Los Angeles Times, "Despite 7 Republicans voting guilty, Senate acquits Trump in attack on Capitol":

WASHINGTON — The Senate acquitted former President Trump on Saturday in his second impeachment trial, even as seven members of his own party delivered a historic rebuke by joining Democrats in voting to convict him of inciting the deadly insurrection last month at the U.S. Capitol.

The 57-43 vote to find Trump guilty fell short of the 67 votes needed for conviction, but it was the most bipartisan such vote in any presidential impeachment trial, exposing the fractures in a Republican Party divided over its future after Trump’s presidency.

The vote was immediately followed by a blistering indictment of Trump on the Senate floor by Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), who had voted to acquit saying that impeachment of a former president was unconstitutional, but painted Trump as an unhinged menace to democratic institutions.

The Republicans who voted for conviction were Sens. Richard M. Burr of North Carolina, Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, Susan Collins of Maine, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, Mitt Romney of Utah, Ben Sasse of Nebraska and Patrick J. Toomey of Pennsylvania.

Trump is the first American president to be impeached twice, and this trial, which lasted just five days, was the first of a former president. The House impeached him last month on a charge of inciting the insurrection Jan. 6, when a violent mob of his supporters broke into and ransacked the Capitol. The assault left five people dead, including a police officer.

“It is now clear beyond doubt that Trump supported the actions of the mob, and so he must be convicted,” Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) said in his closing arguments. “If that’s not grounds for impeachment — if that’s not a high crime and misdemeanor against the republic of the United States of America — then nothing is. President Trump must be convicted for the safety and security of our democracy and our people.”

“This trial, in the final analysis, is not about Donald Trump,” Raskin continued. “The country and the world know who Donald Trump is. This trial is about who we are.”

In their closing arguments, as they did during the trial, House Democrats played a collection of videos that showed graphic violence from the rioters’ attack, including heretofore confidential security video that revealed how close the mob got to lawmakers and staff. The videos — some filmed just steps from where the trial took place — provided an emotional punch to the case...

You can see how the lame "MSM" news outlets are trying to frame things. The "seven" Republicans who voted to convict are the heroes of the story. The New York Times made it sound like acquittal was the first step toward some kind of ultimate reckoning within the Republican Party. That's of course highly doubtful, since now that Trump's acquitted he can toy with running for reelection in 2024 all he wants, and I doubt the state-level prosecutions around the country (in New York, especially) will have their intended effect of destroying Trump, much less his huge MAGA movement, which is the ultimate bane of deranged leftists everywhere.  

Lead House Impeachment Manager Jamie Raskin (VIDEO)

I didn't watch a single minute of yesterday's "snap impeachment" insanity. I do know that CNN made a big day of it, as I just checked the channel guide on my Samsung TV, which showed CNN scheduling hours-long segments blocked out for the "presidential impeachment." It's all such bull. 

But I don't begrudge Rep. Jamie Raskin, who just the week before the Capitol riot lost his 25-year-old son, Tommy, who succumbed to depression and took his own life. And apparently, Rep. Raskin previously taught constitutional law before becoming a Member of Congress. And the verdict is in that his opening statement was a barn-burner.

All that aside, like I said, this whole impeachment thing, the second time Trump has been impeached by hate-addled Democrats who've spent four years fomenting and CONDONING the very kind of "incitement" the former president is now being charged with, is a sham; and American's aren't all that enthusiastic about it, according to Gallup, where the poll shows the Trump overall job approval record isn't that bad, with respondents saying "the country made progress in two important areas over the four years he served as president. More also see progress than regression in another five areas."

And you gotta remember, Gallup and every other polling organization underrepresents conservatives and Republicans in their polling, so the public's view on his performance is probably even better than what's reported. But it is what it is. Democrats in the press and polling world can never do wrong, while conservatives are always the "bad ones," clinging to their "guns and religion," or whatever. 

Here's the video of Rep. Raskin:

New Impeachment Would Damage the Constitution

From Professor Jonathan Turley, at the Hill, "Swift new impeachment would damage the Constitution":

The author Franz Kafka once wrote, “My guiding principle is this. Guilt is never to be doubted.” Democrats suddenly appear close to adopting that standard into the Constitution as they prepare for a second impeachment of President Trump. With seeking his removal for incitement, Democrats would gut not only the impeachment standard but also free speech, all in a mad rush to remove Trump just days before his term ends.

Democrats are seeking to remove Trump on the basis of his remarks to supporters before the rioting at the Capitol. Like others, I condemned those remarks as he gave them, calling them reckless and wrong. I also opposed the challenges to electoral votes in Congress. But his address does not meet the definition for incitement under the criminal code. It would be viewed as protected speech by the Supreme Court.

When I testified in the impeachment hearings of Trump and Bill Clinton, I noted that an article of impeachment does not have to be based on any clear crime but that Congress has looked to the criminal code to weigh impeachment offenses. For this controversy now, any such comparison would dispel claims of criminal incitement. Despite broad and justified condemnation of his words, Trump never actually called for violence or riots. But he urged his supporters to march on the Capitol to raise their opposition to the certification of electoral votes and to back the recent challenges made by a few members of Congress. Trump told the crowd “to peacefully and patriotically make your voices be heard.”

Still more (via Memeorandum).  

Dems Push Ahead on Impeachment, Aiming for Vote Next Week

Following-up from last night, "'The Associated Press reported the Capitol Police turned down offers of help to deal with pro-Trump protesters from not one but two law enforcement agencies, opting to treat Wednesday's rally as if it were a free speech demonstration...'"

Never forget that all the Biden-Harris talk of "unifying" the country was all campaign lies. 

At NYT, "Live Updates: Democrats Look to Impeachment as Chaos Engulfs Trump’s White House":

Democrats plunged forward on Friday with plans to impeach President Trump over his role in inciting a violent mob attack on the Capitol, picking up some potential Republican support to move as early as next week to try to force Mr. Trump from office just as his term is drawing to a close.

Representative Katherine Clark of Massachusetts, the No. 4 Democrat, said that if Vice President Mike Pence would not invoke the 25th Amendment to forcibly relieve Mr. Trump of his duties, Democrats were prepared to act by the middle of next week to impeach him for a second time. Speaker Nancy Pelosi planned to gather Democrats by telephone at noon to discuss the effort.

They were rushing to begin the expedited proceeding two days after the president rallied his supporters near the White House, urging them to go to the Capitol to protest his election defeat, then continuing to stoke their grievances as they stormed the edifice — with Mr. Pence and the entire Congress meeting inside to formalize President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s victory — in a rampage that left five dead.

“If the reports are correct and Mike Pence is not going to uphold his oath of office and remove the president and help protect our democracy, then we will move forward with impeachment to do just that,” Ms. Clark said in an interview on CNN.

She added that Democrats would use a fast-track process the could begin as early as “mid-next week.”

“We have a president who incited a seditious mob to storm the Capitol,” Ms. Clark said. “We now have five deaths from that and the harm to our democracy is really unfathomable.”

The prospect of forcing Mr. Trump from office in less than two weeks appeared remote given the logistical and political challenges involved, given that a two-thirds majority in the Senate would be required. But the push unfolded amid a sense of national crisis following the Capitol siege, as White House resignations piled up and some Republicans appeared newly open to the possibility, which could also disqualify Mr. Trump from holding political office in the future...

"What doesn’t kill you, makes you stronger," as Friedrich Nietzsche apparently said. 

Democrats will further divide the nation and make the MAGA forces stronger. You can go to the bank with that, sheesh.

Trump Revs Up Campaign

At LAT, "Flush with cash and confident after impeachment, Trump campaign revs up the road show":

WASHINGTON —  Four years after his hostile takeover of the White House, President Trump’s second campaign bears little resemblance to the first — he’s flush with cash, buoyed by an uptick in poll numbers, and brimming with confidence after surviving investigations, an impeachment and myriad controversies that have helped unite once-wary Republicans behind him. 

Unlike his slapdash, anything goes 2016 campaign, Trump now can rely on a massive, professionalized apparatus that has helped raise more than $200 million, deployed eager surrogates to early primary states, and built an extensive field operation and advertising network months before Democrats are likely to choose their nominee.

He also has found new ways to break political taboos, seeking to overshadow Democratic candidates in Iowa and New Hampshire just before they held their nominating contests and playing with voters’ already frazzled nerves. At a primary-eve rally in Manchester, N.H., the president even urged supporters in the state who were registered independents, and thus able to vote in either party’s primary, to vote for the weakest Democrat.

“My only problem is I’m trying to figure who is their weakest candidate — I think they’re all weak!” he said with a broad grin.

It’s an in-your-face strategy hashed out largely by campaign manager Brad Parscale and, of course, the president, an intense manager of his own brand who is determined to remain on offense and to create the appearance of dominance and popularity that, he hopes, becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy in November.

“He will not give the Democrats a free pass any day of this campaign. They don’t get to have their day where they dominate the news,” said Matt Schlapp, a veteran GOP operative whose wife, Mercedes, works for the Trump campaign. “He’s stepping into their days and talking about why he should get four more years.”

“The more Democrats smear President Trump, the more enthusiasm we see for him and his many accomplishments,” Ronna McDaniel, chair of the Republican National Committee, said in a statement.

There is some evidence for that. A Gallup tracking poll from the last two weeks of January, during the Senate impeachment trial, showed Trump’s approval rating at 49%, its highest point ever. And the campaign raised $1 million in online donations for 10 straight days during the trial. More recent polls show the president’s approval number back in the low-to-mid 40s, where it has hovered for most of his term, although his support among Republicans is sky high.

None of that makes his reelection as inevitable as his campaign suggests. He is running well behind the top Democratic contenders, according to a Quinnipiac University poll this week that showed the president losing a hypothetical head-to-head race to Michael Bloomberg by nine points, Bernie Sanders by eight and Joe Biden by seven.

He also trailed Pete Buttigieg, Elizabeth Warren and Amy Klobuchar by at least four points, according to the survey.

More.

The Big Winner of Impeachment: Partisanship

An excellent piece, at LAT, "News Analysis: Trump’s impeachment and acquittal please partisans on both sides":

News Analysis: Trump's impeachment and acquittal please partisans on both sides https://t.co/3aAONcX2ON w/ @Noahbierman

— Sarah D. Wire (@sarahdwire) February 5, 2020

WASHINGTON —  Minutes after President Nixon resigned in disgrace and left the White House in August 1974, Gerald R. Ford was sworn in as president and sought to heal a traumatized nation, declaring, “Our long national nightmare is over.”
Although President Trump was acquitted by the Senate on Wednesday and allowed to remain in office, a similar attempt at reconciliation or closure is difficult to imagine.

Americans are instead left with toxic images from Trump’s State of the Union speech to a joint session of Congress on Tuesday, with Trump refusing to shake House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s outstretched hand, and Pelosi later publicly ripping up the text of Trump’s speech in disgust.

A nation stewing with partisan fury has grown angrier, with Democrats bitter over a president they believe got away with abusing his office and Republicans incensed that he was impeached at all.

The final Senate votes reflected that vast gulf: No Democrats broke ranks, and only one Republican — Sen. Mitt Romney of Utah, the GOP’s 2012 presidential nominee —condemned what he called “an appalling abuse of the public trust” and voted to convict Trump on one of two articles of impeachment.

Yet many caught in the maelstrom of the last 4½ months — first in a rancorous House impeachment inquiry and then an acrimonious Senate trial — believe their party emerged victorious, exciting passion among their core constituencies.

“The politics in America are so polarized right now that I think both sides probably think they’ve done well politically,” said Tad Devine, who served as a senior advisor to three Democratic presidential campaigns. “They’re talking to entirely different audiences.”

The lack of a consensus has left the long-term lessons of this impeachment unsettled, at least until Trump and Republican lawmakers face the voters in November, and perhaps beyond that.

Nixon resigned before he was impeached over the Watergate scandal after public opinion turned against him and senior Republican senators warned they would vote to remove him from office if he did not leave first. In 1999, President Clinton survived impeachment, publicly apologized, and saw his popularity rise as Americans largely decided he should not be removed for lying about an affair with a White House intern.

But Democrats paid a price the following year when Clinton’s vice president, Al Gore, lost the presidential election to George W. Bush by a razor-thin margin ultimately decided by the Supreme Court.

“In the Nixon case, the president left office ... because of a national bipartisan sense that he should,” said Timothy Naftali, founding director of the Richard Nixon Presidential Library and Museum in Yorba Linda. “So there was a resolution of the scandal, as much as you can have in a complex republic. There was a consensus he needed to be removed before the end of his term. That consensus doesn’t exist today.”

No president before Trump has been impeached and then gone on to seek reelection. That gives Americans a chance to weigh in more directly, but it also widens the political and social divisions that have defined the turbulent Trump presidency.

“What’s at stake is not just Trump’s reelection or the future of the Republican Party,” said William Howell, a University of Chicago professor who has written extensively about executive power. “It’s about Congress’ ability to check presidential power.”

Historians, constitutional scholars and Democratic lawmakers say Trump’s acquittal in the Senate has almost certainly weakened the authority of Congress to oversee and provide a check on the executive branch. Even if Trump isn’t reelected, future presidents are likely to cite his precedent in refusing to honor congressional subpoenas, blocking witnesses and evidence, without consequence.

Not only did the stonewalling thwart House investigators during the impeachment inquiry, but the Trump administration has also regularly declined to attend routine oversight hearings in Congress.

“Unfortunately, yes, that’s the precedent and everybody seems to love precedents more than they love laws,” said Brenda Wineapple, author of “The Impeachers: The Trial of Andrew Johnson and the Dream of a Just Nation.” “Suspending the issue of right and wrong, when people get away with things, it’s incentive to do it again.”

The result, in some ways, is likely to be the reverse of the post-Watergate experience.

After Nixon resigned, Congress moved to sharply curtail the president’s authority and create direct oversight of U.S. intelligence agencies for the first time, among other reforms. But many of those changes have weakened in recent decades as Congress has handed more power back to the White House, giving Trump a freer rein than his predecessors.

Few scholars think Trump’s episode heralds a new “age of impeachment,” as former special prosecutor Kenneth W. Starr argued in his defense of the president. The most zealous partisans on each side often threaten impeachment but seldom muster the political power to force the grueling process.

Pelosi resisted several attempts to impeach Trump before acceding to her base in September when a White House whistleblower accused Trump of seeking Ukraine’s help in smearing Joe Biden, a 2020 Democratic presidential candidate, while withholding a White House meeting and $391 million in military aid as leverage...

Joe Rogan Endorses Bernie Sanders, Chaos Ensues

From Ed Driscoll, at Instapundit, "BERNIE SANDERS WELCOMED AS NEWEST MEMBER OF ALT-RIGHT AFTER JOE ROGAN ENDORSEMENT."

And, "JOE ROGAN IS THE WALTER CRONKITE OF OUR ERA."

MoveOn.org, the organization that wanted to "censure" Bill Clinton and "move on" from impeachment, is particularly upset.

We urge Sen. Sanders and his campaign to apologize and stop elevating this endorsement. We stand in solidarity with folks hurt by this.

— MoveOn (@MoveOn) January 25, 2020

Bernie Sanders Surges in Iowa

I hope Bernie wins Iowa, at least for the momentum. He should take New Hampshire easily, as he did in 2016.

With those two states in his victory column, he'll earn tremendous momentum and perhaps force more winnowing of the field.

We'll see.

If it's Bernie vs. Trump in November, it'll be clash of the ideological titans, heh.

At NYT, "Sanders Seizes Lead in Volatile Iowa Race, Times Poll Finds":

DES MOINES — Senator Bernie Sanders has opened up a lead in Iowa just over a week before the Democratic caucuses, consolidating support from liberals and benefiting from divisions among more moderate presidential candidates who are clustered behind him, according to a New York Times/Siena College poll of likely caucusgoers.

Mr. Sanders has gained six points since the last Times-Siena survey, in late October, and is now capturing 25 percent of the vote in Iowa. Pete Buttigieg, the former mayor of South Bend, Ind., and former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. have remained stagnant since the fall, with Mr. Buttigieg capturing 18 percent and Mr. Biden 17 percent.

The rise of Mr. Sanders has come at the expense of his fellow progressive, Senator Elizabeth Warren: she dropped from 22 percent in the October poll, enough to lead the field, to 15 percent in this survey. Senator Amy Klobuchar, who is garnering 8 percent, is the only other candidate approaching double digits.

The changing fortunes of the two liberal candidates, and the secondary position of the two leading centrists, underscores the volatile nature of the Democratic primary after more than a year of campaigning, as voters wrestle with which of the contenders can defeat President Trump. At various times over the past six months Ms. Warren and Mr. Buttigieg had surged in Iowa, only to fall back, while Mr. Biden’s strength has ebbed and flowed here even as he remained at the top of the polls nationally.

But Mr. Sanders, a self-described democratic socialist from Vermont making his second run for the White House, appears to be peaking at the right time: this month was the first time he has finished atop a poll in Iowa, after also leading a Des Moines Register-CNN survey two weeks ago. The Times-Siena poll’s margin of error was plus or minus 4.8 percentage points.

Despite Mr. Sanders’s ascent, the combined strength of the moderate candidates is unmistakable. The poll showed that 55 percent of those surveyed said they preferred a standard-bearer who is “more moderate than most Democrats.” Just 38 percent said they wanted one who is “more liberal than most Democrats.”

A victory by Mr. Sanders in Iowa, where he suffered a narrow loss to Hillary Clinton four years ago, would represent a remarkable comeback for a 78-year-old candidate whose heart attack in October threatened to upend his candidacy. It would also create a moment of high anxiety for establishment-aligned Democrats who are deeply alarmed about a potential Sanders nomination.

Should he prevail in Iowa and face a similarly fractured field of mainstream rivals in New Hampshire, where he also currently leads in the polls, Mr. Sanders could be difficult to slow.

Several voters who backed Mr. Sanders cited the consistency of his positions over the course of his career, and their ideological alignment with his views.

“Bernie’s authentic,” said Austin Sturch, 25, of Evansdale, adding, “Pretty much everything he’s saying — I can’t put it better than he can.”

Still, much here remains uncertain. Iowa voters are famous for settling on a candidate late, and this year is no different; Mr. Sanders, along with the other senators in the race, is pinned down in Washington during Mr. Trump’s impeachment trial and unable to campaign here on weekdays. And the final results could turn on two factors that will not be known until caucus night: the size and composition of the electorate, and the preferences of voters whose first choices are eliminated because of the arcane caucus rules.

If the other leading candidates finish bunched together on caucus night on Feb. 3, it is unlikely any of them will drop out of the race after Iowa. Each of the three top hopefuls trailing Mr. Sanders has the money to compete in New Hampshire, which is just a week later.

And should no clear moderate alternative to Mr. Sanders emerge from the early nominating states, the self-financing Michael R. Bloomberg, who has already spent more than $260 million on advertising and hired more than 1,000 staff members, is awaiting the field on Super Tuesday in early March...

And more at NYT, can the Dems unite after the primaries?

A Major Fear for Democrats: Will the Party Come Together by November? Via ⁦@jmartNYT⁩ https://t.co/9Z0Pp6TYmD

— Maggie Haberman (@maggieNYT) January 25, 2020

Theodore White, Breach of Faith

At Amazon, Theodore White, Breach of Faith: The Fall of Richard Nixon.

Trump Impeachment: The Last Gasp of Progressivism

Following-up, "Impeachment Trial Begins."

And from Mark Tapscott, at Instapundit, "IMPEACHMENT IS THE LAST GASP OF THE PROGRESSIVE ERA":

Donald Devine was President Ronald Reagan’s Director of the U.S. Office of Personnel Management (OPM), and is a long-respected conservative strategist and thinker.

Writing today in The Imaginative Conservative, Devine argues the Trump impeachment is nothing less than the end of liberal Big Government’s ascendancy just when progressives thought they were on the brink of final victory:

Thanks to the pervasive political correctness they created, Devine writes, “progressives had assumed their education and mainstream media ‘mocking’ of traditional values had turned America progressive and now Donald Trump had proven they had not. Now with Mr. Trump in office, the last hope to contain the effects could only be by the expert bureaucracy that was the original faith of progressive scientific administration to produce the good welfare state.

“Rather than the elected president representing the people, salvation must now come from the permanent government. In the wake of the impeachment, there was a [Washington] Post op-ed headline actually arguing publicly that ‘bureaucratic resistance is what the Founders intended.’ Another piece by the celebrated intellectual Francis Fukuyama in The Wall Street Journal argued directly that ‘American liberty depends on the deep state.’”

Devine concludes with a warning for the Right that all conservatives ought to ponder with deep seriousness, as the end of the American story is far from written and may yet go in directions that are toxic to individual liberty.

Impeachment Trial Begins

Well, here we go!

The impeachment trial is live right now in the Senate, with Chief Justice John Roberts presiding.

It's pretty amazing.

Mitch McConnell has ice water running through his veins. It's a spectacle!

At LAT:

McConnell moves to speed up Senate impeachment trial
https://t.co/HdjP2SfOrc

— Sarah D. Wire (@sarahdwire) January 21, 2020

Raoul Berger, Impeachment

At Amazon, Raoul Berger, Impeachment: The Constitutional Problems.

Impeachment Has Been Great for Business

The GOP fundraising business, that is. Who didn't see this coming?

On Twitter:

Axios’ Swan: impeachment backlash helping Republicans build a “formidable” machine for 2020 pic.twitter.com/jyN4QPg3Bd

— Steve Guest (@SteveGuest) January 19, 2020

Majority Leader Mitch McConnell: The 'Senate's Time is at Hand' (VIDEO)

It's impeachment trial, Day 2.

The Majority Leader skewers the Dems and it's hilarious.

At at New York Times, via Memeorandum, "Trump Legal Team to Add Starr and Dershowitz for Senate Trial."

White Voters See Doom Without Trump

People keep talking about "civil war" but I don't see that happening.

Conservatives will continue to flee the progressive urban enclaves and coastal states, and leftists will continue to cluster into "high-density" shithole municipalities (think San Francisco), drinking their Veuve Clicquot in million dollar townhomes, while moaning about "inequality."

That said, I love the "civil war" metaphor and, frankly, I won't mind if it becomes more than a metaphor (calling Kurt Schlichter).

At NYT, "‘Nothing Less Than a Civil War’: These White Voters on the Far Right See Doom Without Trump":

‘Nothing Less Than a Civil War’: These White Voters on the Far Right See Doom Without Trump

Deeply conservative, they organize online and outside the GOP apparatus, engaging in more explicit versions of the chest-beating seen at the president’s rallieshttps://t.co/zOPrfLm9Sf

— Yashar Ali 🐘 (@yashar) December 28, 2019

GOLDEN VALLEY, Ariz. — Great American Pizza & Subs, on a highway about 100 miles southeast of Las Vegas, was busier and Trumpier than usual. On any given day it serves “M.A.G.A. Subs” and “Liberty Bell Lasagna.” The “Second Amendment” pizza comes “loaded” with pepperoni and sausage. The dining room is covered in regalia praising President Trump.

But this October morning was “Trumpstock,” a small festival celebrating the president. The speakers included the local Republican congressman, Paul Gosar, and lesser-known conservative personalities. There was a fringe 2020 Senate candidate in Arizona who ran a website that published sexually explicit photos of women without their consent; a pro-Trump rapper whose lyrics include a racist slur aimed at Barack Obama; and a North Carolina activist who once said of Muslims, “I will kill every one of them before they get to me.”

All were welcome, except liberals.

“They label us white nationalists, or white supremacists,” volunteered Guy Taiho Decker, who drove from California to attend the event. A right-wing protester, he has previously been arrested on charges of making terrorist threats.

“There’s no such thing as a white supremacist, just like there’s no such thing as a unicorn,” Mr. Decker said. “We’re patriots.”

As Mr. Trump’s bid for re-election shifts into higher gear, his campaign hopes to recapture voters who drifted away from the party in 2018 and 2019: independents who embraced moderate Democratic candidates, suburban women tired of Mr. Trump’s personal conduct and working-class voters who haven’t benefited from his economic policies.

But if any group remains singularly loyal to Mr. Trump, it is the small but impassioned number of white voters on the far right, often in rural communities like Golden Valley, who extol him as a cultural champion reclaiming the country from undeserving outsiders.

These voters don’t passively tolerate Mr. Trump’s “build a wall” message or his ban on travel from predominantly Muslim countries — they’re what motivates them. They see themselves in his fear-based identity politics, bolstered by conspiratorial rhetoric about caravans of immigrants and Democratic “coups.”

But events like it, as well as speaking engagements featuring far-right supporters of the president, have become part of the political landscape during the Trump era. Islamophobic taunts can be heard at his rallies. Hate speech and conspiracy theories are staples of some far-right websites. If Trumpstock was modest in size, it stood out as a sign of extremist public support for a sitting president.

And these supporters have electoral muscle in key areas: Mr. Trump outperformed Mitt Romney, the 2012 Republican nominee, in rural parts of Arizona like Mohave County, where Golden Valley is located. Mr. Trump won 58,282 votes in the county, compared to 47,901 for Mr. Romney, though Mr. Romney carried the state by a much bigger vote margin.

Arizona will be a key battleground state in 2020: Democrats already flipped a Senate seat and a Tucson-based congressional district from red to blue in 2018. For Mr. Trump, big turnout from white voters in areas like Mohave County — and in rural parts of other battlegrounds like Florida, Michigan, Minnesota and Georgia — could be a lifeline in a tight election.

“We like to call this the ‘Red Wall of Arizona,’” said Laurence Schiff, a psychiatrist and Republican campaign official in Mohave County who organizes in support of Mr. Trump’s campaign. “Winning the state starts here, with us.”

Grass-roots gatherings play a critical role in the modern culture of political organizing, firing up ardent supporters and cementing new ones. Small circles of Trump-supporting conservatives, often organized online and outside the traditional Republican Party apparatus, engage in more decentralized — and explicit — versions of the chest-beating that happens at Mr. Trump’s closely watched political rallies...

More.

The Main Issue of 2020 Will Be Trump, Not the Economy

It's old Bill Schnieder, who was CNN's top political analyst in the 1990s (when Judy Woodruff and Bernard Shaw used to anchor), at the Hill, "Impeached, with a solid base and no apologies — Trump becomes the only issue of 2020."

"Impeached, with a solid base and no apologies — Trump becomes the only issue of 2020" via @TheHillOpinion https://t.co/RNulfef9A7 pic.twitter.com/nC0wwkxk3C

— The Hill (@thehill) December 23, 2019

Both Sides Dig In Over Senate Trial

Noah Feldman, who testified during the House impeachment hearings (before Nadler's Judiciary Committee), posted something of a bombshell piece at Bloomberg the other day, "If Trump's Impeached, Then Why Can't a Senate Start Now?"

The whole delay is totally predictable. The Dems are losing the debate over impeachment, which went down on straight party lines. Trump's approval ratings are at the highest points of his presidency. Some House Democrats were grumbling about how they only wanted to "censure" the president, not impeach. Blah, blah.

It's going to the Senate one way or another, mainly because the American people aren't going to stand for the left's shenanigans too much longer.

In any case, at LAT, "Trump impeachment trial: Squaring off in the Senate":

Trump impeachment trial: Squaring off in the Senate https://t.co/Gsi93DcVku

— Los Angeles Times (@latimes) December 23, 2019

WASHINGTON —  A senior White House official and leading Senate Republicans predicted Sunday that congressional Democrats would fail in their bid to force the Senate to summon witnesses in President Trump’s impeachment trial.
Democrats countered by asking why, if Trump were innocent, he would block the testimony of top aides with direct knowledge of his dealings with Ukraine — actions that led the House of Representatives to approve two articles of impeachment against the president last week.

Following Wednesday’s vote, only the third time in history that the House has impeached a president, Speaker Nancy Pelosi did not immediately forward the articles to the Senate for trial.

Democrats said that, in light of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s pledge to work in close concert with the White House, they were not satisfied the proceedings would be conducted fairly and impartially. Pelosi said she wanted clarity about what rules the Senate planned to follow before deciding which members of the House would act as the prosecutors, known as managers, of the case in the Senate.

Pelosi (D-San Francisco) is expected to send the articles to the Senate after the holiday recess. Senior White House aide Marc Short said he expected Republicans would make no concessions in return, even though Trump says he wants a quick trial in the GOP-controlled Senate.

“We’re confident this position is untenable, and she’s going to move it along,” Short, the chief of staff to Vice President Mike Pence and a former White House legislative director, told “Fox News Sunday.”

“She will yield — there’s no way she can hold this position,” he said, referring to Pelosi.

The White House’s current opposition to witnesses in the Senate marks an about-face. Until recently, Trump was insisting he wanted extensive witnesses. He hoped to turn a trial into an opportunity for his lawyers to call prominent Democrats and force them to answer questions about his so-far-groundless allegations of misconduct among that party’s members. McConnell (R-Ky.) and other Senate Republicans opposed that idea and appeared to have convinced Trump to drop it.

Democratic lawmakers defended Pelosi’s delay.

“I think what she’s just trying to do is make sure the best possible case for a fair trial happens,” said Sen. Cory Booker of New Jersey, interviewed on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”

Addressing Trump directly, Booker said: “If you’re innocent, have acting Chief of Staff [Mick] Mulvaney come before the Senate, swear to an oath — settle this whole thing.”

Sen. Chris Van Hollen of Maryland said Pelosi was doing “exactly the right thing” in “focusing a spotlight on the need to have a fair trial in the United States Senate.”

Since an impeachment inquiry began nearly three months ago, Trump has refused any cooperation by the executive branch. The blanket rejection of subpoenas for documents and squelching of appearances by key figures such as Mulvaney and Secretary of State Michael R. Pompeo formed the basis for one of the two articles of impeachment, alleging obstruction of Congress. The other accuses Trump of abuse of power.

More than a dozen diplomats and current or former administration officials defied Trump’s instructions and testified in the House proceedings. Those witnesses helped House Democrats make their case that the president withheld crucial military aid and a coveted White House meeting as a means of pressuring Ukraine’s newly elected leader to announce investigations into former Vice President Joe Biden and his son Hunter.

Trump, who has never consistently accepted U.S. intelligence findings that Russia interfered in the 2016 election on his behalf, also asked President Volodymyr Zelensky to look into a debunked theory that Ukraine interfered in that election on behalf of Hillary Clinton, Trump’s opponent.

Although new evidence continues to emerge, Democrats say it is impossible to establish key details of what transpired if Trump blocks testimony by senior aides...

More at WaPo, via Memeorandum, "Impeachment live updates: McConnell, Pelosi dig in on impasse over Trump's Senate trial."

President Trump's an Existential Threat to the Regime Party

From Roger Kimball, at American Greatness, "The ‘Impeachment’ of Donald Trump":

Many commentators, myself included, have warned that the House was playing a dangerous game by taking the box marked “impeachment” down from the shelf and beginning to bat those balls around when there were no plausible grounds—none—for playing the game to begin with. Impeachment—again, as many commentators, myself included, have pointed out—was intended by the Founders to be a remedy of last resort, an in-case-of-fire-break-glass option when every other recourse had failed.

As recently as this March, Nancy Pelosi had insisted that impeachment had to be a bipartisan decision, only employed to address the most serious crimes. In endorsing the House charade, she shelved that scruple along with all her other ones. The result, as Andy McCarthy and others have pointed out, will be to make impeachment much more common. The price of “trivializing” impeachment, as the House has just done, will likely be to make it the “new normal.”

Indeed, the legal scholar Jonathan Turley, a prominent critic of the president, but one who has not therefore tainted his reason, pointed out that by the standards employed against Donald Trump, every living president could have been impeached. Turley was particularly troubled by the charge that the president was guilty of obstructing Congress. Why? Because all the president did was go to court to challenge House demands for certain evidence. The House, Turley noted, “set an abbreviated period for investigation, arguably the shortest investigation of any presidential impeachment.”

And then they said if you don’t turn over the evidence during that period, you’re obstructing Congress. Well, President Trump went to court to challenge the necessity of handing over that material. Both Bill Clinton and Richard Nixon were allowed to go all the way to the Supreme Court—they ultimately lost, and Nixon resigned soon after. My concern is that this really does seem like you are making an appeal to the court into a high crime or a misdemeanor (my emphasis).

I think there are two takeaways from this sad affair. One concerns the future place of impeachment in our system of government. I think that Andy McCarthy is right in suggesting that the ultimate sanction of impeachment has more and more been been routinely threatened because the usual checks and balances have been more or less neutered by the growing power of the so-called administrative state. “The problem,” McCarthy writes, is that

after a century of progressive governance . . . these checks do not work anymore. The federal government and its administrative state have grown monstrously big. Federal money is now as much tied to social welfare as to traditional government functions. Budgeting is slap-dash and dysfunctional. To threaten to deny funds or leave agencies leaderless is to be seen, not as reining in executive excess, but as heartlessly harming this or that interest group. Lawmakers would rather run up tens of trillions in debt than be portrayed that way

A lot more could be said about the growth of administrative power, which is essentially executive power, in the face of the paralysis or abdication of responsibility of Congress to fulfill its core responsibilities.

But in the context of our present Trump-centric drama, I suspect that the chief issue is a deeper, structural deformation. I mean the gradual transformation of our government from a vigorous two-party system into a one-and-a-half party system. I’ve written about this before. The idea is not mine but something I crib from conversations with the commentator James Piereson of the William E. Simon Foundation.

The bottom line is that, for many decades now, no matter which party has been in office, the real center of power has resided in the regime party, the party that government itself evolved into. Although plenty of Republicans have sat around this table, happy to engorge themselves on the attendant spoils, the regime party has always been the Democratic party. They encouraged an agenda of dependency that they could simultaneously cater to, exploit, and manage—an agenda that resulted not only in that bloated administrative apparatus that is staffed primarily by Democrats but also a sort of professional underclass of clients of this apparatus. Until the election of Donald Trump, the fealty of this underclass was reliably Democratic. Now there are cracks in the edifice, a terrifying prospect for their managers.

This is the thing to keep in mind. Donald Trump represents an existential threat to this status quo. Which is why he had to be stopped. On January 20, 2017, 19 minutes after Trump was inaugurated, the Washington Post announced in a headline “The campaign to impeach President Trump has begun.” Indeed, there were calls for Trump’s impeachment even before he was sworn in. Al Green (D-Texas) put it with admirable clarity when he said, back in 2017 (reiterating the sentiment in 2018) that “I am concerned that if we do not impeach this president, then he will get reelected.”

Trump’s real crime, in other words, was having been elected in the first place.

The point is that Donald Trump had to be impeached not because of anything he had done or had failed to do but because of who he was, what he represented: an existential threat to string-pullers of our one-and-a-half-party system. That is why the Democrats can ride roughshod over the rule of law, to say nothing of precedent and tradition, ruining who knows how many lives, tying up the business of government with preposterous special counsel investigations, House hearings, and the like, while the Republicans mostly vibrate in impotent fury and they emerge from the turmoil scot-free.

Again, there are some signs of fissures in this decades-on Democratic dispensation. The pugilistic response of the president himself is one such sign (“Cet animal est très méchant: quand on l’attaque il se défend”—“This animal is very mean: it defends itself when attacked”). Another sign of change is the stalwartness of Mitch McConnell and the doggedness of U.S. Attorney John Durham and his boss, Attorney General William Barr. My own guess is that we’ll know real progress has been made when—or rather if—a raft of indictments are handed down in the business of the deep-state effort to take down the Trump campaign and then his presidency...