It is an old football maxim: “The best defense is a good offense”. And, as Donald Trump and his Republican cohorts have decided, that applies every bit as much to politics – in particular, the Democrat impeachment effort.
From John Fritze, Michael Collins and Courtney Subramanian’s article for USA Today, via msn.com, we have this:
President Donald Trump delivered a warning to Democrats during a raucous Minnesota rally last month: The impeachment inquiry, he predicted, would backfire in next year’s election.
Far from avoiding the impeachment inquiry, or the president’s now infamous call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, Republican groups are hammering vulnerable Democrats in digital and television ads for abandoning pocketbook issues in favor of what they describe as a relentless drive to remove Trump from office.
Republican political strategist Ron Bonjean said GOP groups are moving away from attacking the impeachment process to accusing Democrats of playing politics.
“You’re either defining this environment right now or you’re going to get defined by it politically,” Bonjean said.
I’ll start by noting the reference to “the president’s now infamous call”: a not-very-subtle signal that President Trump is in the wrong. That is exactly the kind of non-neutral “journalism” I, and maybe you, have come to expect from mainstream media.
With that in mind, let’s think about the concept itself.
The impeachment inquiry/procedure/whatever they’re calling it this week is going to continue. And, as we have discussed many times in this blog, it continues at the expense of the House acting on legislation for the benefit of the country.
Other than the impeachment resolution, can you name even one piece of legislation enacted by the House of Representatives and sent on to the Senate? Big or small?
The truth is that, in the 11 months since Democrats took control of the House, it has done virtually nothing but attack the President.
For the first half year or so, their attacks centered on accusations of collusion with Russia and obstruction of justice.
But the mueller report, which said there was no collusion and insufficient evidence to pursue any obstruction of justice, rendered that half year wasted time.
Since then, they have spent their time trying to elevate a telephone call with the Ukrainian President into an impeachable offense, on the claim that Trump withheld aid to Ukraine unless President Zelensky investigated Joe Biden’s use of power and influence to dump his son, Hunter, on a Ukrainian energy company he had no qualifications to be anywhere near.
The problem: not only does the transcript – which President Zelensky has said is accurate – belie those claims, but Zelensky also has stated, in so many words, that he was unaware of any hold-up in aid when the call took place.
In a sane world, that would have ended things right there. But since Democrats’ only objective appears to be removing the elected President of the United States from office, they are clinging to it at all costs.
So what do Republicans do? Do they cower in a corner hoping against hope that mainstream media will laugh this pathetic effort away? Nope, that’s not going to happen.
Do they play defense and simply answer the charges against Trump, hoping a reasoned response will overcome the Democrats’ aggression and their complicit media’s support? Nope again.
What this article suggests is that their strategy will not be cowering or playing defense. It will be to seize the initiative on impeachment by loudly and aggressively calling it out for the sham that it is…
…while, just as loudly and aggressively pointing out that Democrats have done nothing with their control of the House of Representatives but conduct these witch hunts, instead of producing legislation beneficial to the people.
If this strategy is, in fact, implemented, what would Democrats answer in response? Would they put out an extensive list of such legislation to prove Republicans wrong?
That can’t happen because the list doesn’t exist.
So the issue then would become what is more meaningful to voters: trying to impeach President Trump – during an election year, when, if he did something wrong they can vote him out anyway – or having the House of Representatives legislate on their behalf.
It won’t take long to see if that, in fact, is the Republican strategy….and whether it will work.
