Newly minted Republican Representative Peter Meijer, representing the 3rd Congressional District of Michigan, said on Sunday that his vote to impeach the president likely ended his nascent political career.
Appearing on ABC News’ This Week hosted by George Stephanopoulos, Meijer was asked if his vote is likely to impact his political career. He said, “I very well may have [ended my career].”
He tried to cover his betrayal by couching his defense in voting for impeachment in patriotic terms. A member of the Meijer family that owns the Meijer supermarket chain, he also served in a support role as an intelligence advisor in Iraq for two years. Meijer explained:
I think it’s important that we have elected leaders who are not thinking solely about what’s in their individual self-interest — not what is going to be politically expedient — but what we actually need for our country.
He could have just as easily been speaking of the faux president-elect, but he meant to apply his words to the outgoing president and his supporters.
He apparently bought the entire lie that there was no election fraud, that it was made up out of whole cloth of conspiracy theories without evidence. He said that those protesters at the Capitol last Wednesday “were being lied to. They were being misled.”
And that applies to those Republicans who stood firm against impeachment and for the president:
Some of my colleagues in Congress … they share some of the responsibility.… Many of them were fundraising off of this “Stop the Steal” grift. I don’t understand how [they] can look in the mirror and go to sleep at night without that weighing on [their] conscience.
I’m just at a loss for words about how some of them have acted in ways that are just knowingly, provable false.
And they know they are lying, too.
Meijer is a textbook case RINO (Republican in Name Only). When running for Congress, he promised to work with President Trump to “make sure that we advance policies and an agenda that is in the best interest of West Michigan.”
He sold his faux-conservative credentials to the DeVos and Van Andel families, founders of Amway, in order to gain campaign financing. He also fooled Mark Bissell of Bissell homecare products, gaining his financial support, along with the support of Vice President Mike Pence, Representative Dan Crenshaw, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, Representative Steve Scalise, and Senator Tom Cotton.
Meijer had his opportunity. He no doubt heard Deputy Minority Whip Tom Cole (R-Okla.) urge his colleagues to vote against impeachment:
I can think of no action the House can take that is more like to further divide the American people that the action we are contemplating today….
In moving ahead now, the majority is foregoing an investigation, committee hearings, fact witnesses and expert witnesses.
They’re foregoing an opportunity for members to ask questions, to review the evidence, to hear new pieces of evidence, and to consult with experts on impeachment and the Constitution.
And they’re foregoing an opportunity for the president, as accused, to be heard.
It didn’t matter to the turncoat Meijer:
Impeaching a president was nothing that we ever hoped for.
Many of us deliberated deeply. This was not as easy as just saying what is in our best political interest but … looking at the evidence [what evidence?], looking at the facts of the case [what facts?], reading the article [of impeachment] and asking, is this true of our own experience, by our lived experience?
And it was.
The brilliance of the Founders in allowing just a two-year term for such sell-outs as Meijer is once again in evidence. He hasn’t been in office for a month, and it’s already clear, by his own admission, that he likely won’t see a second term.
