Following an hour-long, closed-door meeting with top Democrats on Wednesday, observers noted that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has once again demonstrated her control over the Democrat Party, especially those on the far Left who want to begin impeachment proceedings against the president immediately. Wrote the Washington Post:
The events [in that meeting] underscored that Pelosi has managed to hold the line on her no-impeachment stance despite Trump’s ongoing resistance and relentless liberal pressure for Democrats to try to oust the Republican president.
Most notably, she has quelled an internal clamor and kept in check even the most vocal impeachment proponents and eager investigators ….
[The Democrats] increasingly look to the courts to settle the fight.
The Democrats have run out of options and are left with the grotesque reading of the entire 448-page Mueller report in what the New York Times called “a hideaway Capitol committee room before a few reporters … [and] a C-Span camera.”
Representative Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, told ABC’s This Week: “We are already a bitterly divided country, and an impeachment process will divide us further.”
House Judiciary Committee chairman Jerold Nadler (D-N.Y.) backed away from the I-word: “It depends on what comes out. It depends where the American people are, whether they want to go that way or not. I don’t want to make it sound as if we’re heading for impeachment. Probably we’re not.”
The American people, if Rasmussen’s two recent polls are any indication, are not only desperately tired of hearing about the Mueller report, they are putting chances of a Trump impeachment off their radar.
The Trump administration has now gained the upper hand. After more than two years of relentless attack by Democrats and their sycophants in the media, the shoe is clearly on the other foot. The White House is refusing to honor dozens of demands from those congressional investigative committees over the Mueller report while awaiting the results of three separate investigations into wrongdoings by the Obama/Clinton administration during the years leading up to the 2016 presidential election. With any luck, not only will those investigations expose the miscreants, those miscreants might even be brought to justice. The net is likely to ensnare a pair of Jameses — Clapper and Comey — as well.
If the Democrats are relying on the courts to complete their investigation for them, they will have to wait a very long time, probably well past November 2020. House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) just told reporters that a full House vote on any of the possible contempt citations, including the one approved by Nadler’s committee over Attorney General William Barr, wouldn’t even happen until June at the very earliest. The clock is ticking and the wheels of justice are “grind slowly,” as they say.
All of this is reflected in the complaints by the Democrats’ mouthpiece, the New York Times. On Thursday, the Times complained that, as a result of the successful stalling and stonewalling by the president, the Democrats are “frustrated.” Any hopes that they might be able to interrogate the author of the Mueller reports are “diminishing.” The paper admitted that “Mr. Trump and his allies have successfully parried every one of their moves.”
The pink sheet intimated that perhaps Pelosi might open an impeachment inquiry as a tool to get the information they hope will sink the Trump administration, “using impeachment as an information-gathering tool.” But this would be another lost cause, as the American people are tired of the Mueller “witch hunt” and wouldn’t stand for another one. “The problem for Democrats,” lamented the Times, “is that they have little actual recourse against the executive branch’s refusal to comply with [their] requests, even under subpoena.”
All of which delights Conrad Black, the former newspaper publisher and author who was just granted a pardon for past misdeeds by the president. Writing in National Review, Black sees “Smooth Sailing Ahead for Trump,” giving several reasons for his optimism come November 2020. First, it appears that Trump’s opposite Democrat number next year will be Joe Biden, “a shopworn, moth-eaten, malapropistic journeyman,” according to Black.
Second, once the three investigations are completed, likely exposing all manner of back-room shenanigans by Democrat operatives, the president “will have the comparative high moral ground” going into his reelection campaign.
Third, Black calls Trump “a fierce combatant” with whom the Democrats “have no idea how to deal.” Finally, the president will forcefully tout his successes and victories, starting with the economy’s extraordinary recovery and ongoing strength and including his restructuring of the Supreme Court, his immigration initiatives, and especially his exposure of the media as being nothing more than an echo chamber for the Democrats and their leftist agendas.
Concluded Black: “Barring something completely unforeseeable, this president will have a stronger argument for reelection next year than any president since Richard Nixon in 1972 after his extraordinarily successful first term.”
Photo: AP Images
An Ivy League graduate and former investment advisor, Bob is a regular contributor to The New American, writing primarily on economics and politics. He can be reached at [email protected].
