Impeachment is just the latest in the Democrats’ attempts to undo the 2016 election of Donald Trump as President. Such tries to oust Trump have been going on since the night of November 8, 2016, when the world, the nation and the Democratic nominee, Hillary Clinton, were stunned with the results of the contest.
From a detached viewpoint, I can see this as an extended cartoon exercise, based on a comic strip of the past. First, sometimes comics can “say” things in a humorous way that offends none but illuminates truth.
Some of my favorites include Non Sequitur by Wiley Miller, with nonsensical looks at the human condition, the legendary Garfield, Jim Davis’ yellow cat, The Far Side by Gary Larson (cartoons which show the title well), and Walt Kelly’s Okefenokee Swamp’s possum, Pogo. The latter has one of my favorite quotes, as it shows the truth about most of the world’s problems. Using an historical reference, Pogo claims, “We have met the enemy, and he is us!”
But for the purpose of today’s rant, we turn back to a comic strip that ended almost 24 years ago, Calvin and Hobbes. Written and illustrated by Bill Watterson, the protagonists are Calvin, a precocious six year old, and his stuffed toy tiger, Hobbes. Their adventures were syndicated world wide for ten years, from November 1985 to December 1996. To all who knew Calvin, Hobbes was no more than a favorite plaything of his, but to Calvin, Hobbes was his cherished playmate. When no one else was around, Hobbes came to life and interacted with his “master”.
One recurring theme was how they played games together. Whether it was baseball or tag or any other game, they made up rules as they progressed. Whoever had the ball changed the rules as it suited them.
One wonders if the Democrats took to heart this decades old comic strip in their desperate attempts to overturn the election of President Trump. A brief look at how the “game” has been played will show that, regardless of the election rules and outcome, the Dems have been changing the rules as they went along.
Our Constitution spells out how the Republic selects the Chief Executive. From our grade school years we have know that each state has Electors, totaling two for each Senator plus the number of Representatives for that state. Whoever wins the Presidential contest in each state gets the Electors. With three given to the District of Columbia, the total number of Electors is 538, so whichever candidate gets 270 wins the office.
Those are the rules. On November 9, 2016, the Democrats wanted a recount of the vote in a number of states. This failed, so the next step was to persuade members of the Electoral College to change their votes to Mrs. Clinton because she had more votes than Mr. Trump in the popular vote. Didn’t happen; in fact, more Electors changed their votes from Clinton than did from Trump!
Another attempt to change the election came early in the new President’s term. Some felt that the 25th Amendment, which spelled out how a President could be removed from office, could be used. This required a majority of the Cabinet claiming Trump was unfit for office because of whatever reason they could conjure up, but even now we do not know if any one of those people seriously contemplated doing that.
One of the ongoing accusations against Trump was that he “colluded” with the Russians to steal the election from the queen-in-waiting, Hillary. This idea had been bandied about since before the actual election day, so the Democrats thought that this accusation would be enough to bring Trump down. Using trumped up charges (the pun is intended), a Special Counsel was brought in to investigate the matter. The now infamous Robert Mueller headed this inquisition, and for two years and over 40 million dollars every rock and pebble was turned over for evidence of such nefarious activity by the orange headed man in his campaign. Oops! No such evidence was found, so this method of kicking Trump out of the Oval Office failed.
All of this was to get the goods so the President could be impeached. Some had been using the “I” word since the election, but now the hue and cry was heard from Democrats high and low. In 2018, the party of Jefferson and Jackson won back the House of Representatives, and since this was the body that could impeach, it was only a matter of time before that would happen.
In July of 2019, as most Americans are now aware, President Trump made a routine phone call to the Ukrainian President, Zelensky. Democrats jumped on this because in their words, Trump offered a “quid pro quo” to Ukraine for “dirt” on a possible opponent for the 2020 Presidential election in return for a grant of military aid to that country.
Amid increasing pressure from some in her party, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi authorized an “impeachment inquiry”. Here is where Calvin and Hobbes rule changing began in earnest. There is not a word in the Constitution about such an “inquiry”. It is impeachment or nothing. But not to be deterred by the rules, the Dems went ahead on a straight party-line vote. (Which is not exactly true — two Democratic Representatives voted “no”.)
Rules changed again. Some of the “testimony” was held in secret, with only approved summaries released to the public. And the “testimony” no longer had to be first hand knowledge of the facts. Second and third hand accounts were accepted, even though no proof existed.
When the Dems felt the public was too dumb to understand what quid pro quo meant, they changed the charge to bribery, then attempted bribery and finally extortion.
In the “public” phase of this inquiry, Republicans were refused any witnesses, were cut off when the Chairman, “Pencil-neck” Schiff, felt the questioning by the minority was getting too close to the truth.
Finally, the charges were reduced to two: abuse of power and obstruction of Congress. Neither, of course, has any basis in law. When the Judiciary Committee of the House got the report from the Intelligence Committee, the Dems called only four witnesses. All were professors of law at prestigious universities. Three were committed leftist, and even donated money to Hillary in 2016, while the fourth tried to inject some common sense into the proceedings. After all this folderol, the charges were sent to the entire House on a straight party-line vote.
A word about the history of impeachment is needed. In the Constitution, only the words treason, bribery and otherhigh crimes and misdemeanors are to be considered. Since the last word is amorphous, most people have said that impeachment charges can be anything. Yet, that is not the background from which the Founding Fathers came.
Rob Natelson, a Senior Fellow in Constitutional Jurisprudence at the Independence Institute in Denver, and a law professor for 25 years, and author of the book The Original Constitution: What It Actually Said and Meant, explained what the originators of the impeachment clause intended. Such a procedure was a scrupulously legal one dating from the impeachment trial of the Earl of Stratford in 1641. Standards were fixed in advance and was subject to the rule of law.
So we have to look at the statements on impeachment by the founding fathers, the offenses for which people were impeached in the 17th and 18th centuries, and the entries about this in 18th century legal sources. By the standards of what was meant in 1787, the Democratic have fallen far short of adhering to the spirit of the Constitution’s impeachment clause.
What it looks like is that the House has made up rules, ad hoc, as they went along. My take is that they took a page from Calvin and Hobbes, and changed the rules in order to obtain a prearranged outcome. History will look back at this and see a comic strip writ large, with most people laughing at the antics of the characters playing their parts. But this is no laughing matter, as the Democratic actions have left an indelible black stain on the reputation of the U. S. House