Here We Go Again

Get ready for Kavanaugh 2.0.

The Democrats increasingly threadbare bag of tricks to take down Republicans has needed something new for some time now, and it seems the Dems have seized on the (for them) astonishingly successful smear trap of Judge Kavanaugh. If you can recall without cringing, the Senate confirmation hearing on Judge Kavanaugh's nomination to the Supreme Court was concluded, when the Democrats discovered a (gasp!) new witness with damning information on High-Schooler Bret Kavanaugh - Christine Blasey Ford. They then beat the drums to have her testify in open session, the media joined in, and the Republicans caved, setting off what should have been a days worth of work that was strung out for weeks as new witnesses and new crimes were invented. All the while, both the Dems and the Media hammered Kavanaugh's reputation to a pulp with speculation heaped atop lies, hoping that the Republicans would cave again and vote Kavanaugh down.

Vote him down despite the palpable reality that Bret Kavanaugh had never done anything wrong, and that as Lindsey Graham passionately pointed out, the entire Democrat road-show was a travesty.

So, how does this translate to an Impeachment trial of President Trump? Well, the Democrats have been beating the drum for weeks now that it will be important for the Senate to call witnesses. Mitch McConnel, however, has been adamant that it is the House that calls witnesses in furtherance of its Impeachment decision, and then delivers the evidence they find to the Senate for trial. It is not the Senate's job under the Constitution to find or introduce new evidence in support of the House's Impeachment decision. So, Mitch opines, there will be no new witnesses or evidence to supplement the House's Articles of Impeachment; it is not the job of the Senate to clean up inadequate Articles of Impeachment.

This seems pretty straightforward, and has the added advantage that that is how the Democrats in the Senate handled the Impeachment of their own party's President, Bill Clinton.

But the drum beat for witnesses, and even new charges, continues, so here is what is going to happen over the next few weeks. There will be shocking stories in the Major Media, based on anonymous sources, of some especially heinous perfidy by Trump, and an all out demand that the Senate investigate immediately. Mitch will resist at the outset, and the Senate will duly convene to hear the House's representatives present the Articles of Impeachment, the President will mount his defense, and after the submission of written questions, the Senate will be prepared to vote …. Except, there will be a motion for additional witnesses related to the House's charges, but also for the introduction of evidence of any new crimes the Dems and the Major Media can stitch together out of whole cloth. Four or five of the weak-sisters in the Republican ranks will then fold up under the pressure.

And then the games will begin. Once the door to additional evidence and witnesses is opened, the Dems will parade a slew of new witnesses and odious speculations, and we will all be subjected to a weeks long hatchet job on Trump. The crimes charges will be both tenuous and risible, but it won't matter because the goal, as with Kavanaugh, will be to simply fill the air with such a fury of Trumpian scurrilousness that everyone will be unable to see that there is not one jot or tittle of real, Impeachable evidence of anything.

Hopefully, Mitch or someone will stand up and break through the fog to close the sham of a proceeding off, like Lindsay did in the Kavanaugh matter. But that is not likely.

And so, the ugliness of our politics will again be on display, to the detriment of all of us. Our only hope then will be an appeal to the only group that the Democrats are, deep down, truly afraid of: the American voters. Hopefully they will throw all these bums out next November.