Political reporter for Axios, recently betrothed to the lovely Betsy Woodruff
Scuzz
1796
Someone who will probably never be invited on TV again.
Reality has been cruel to bothsiderists recently, so David Brooks has permanently retreated to the fantasy land inside his head:
What if Elizabeth Warren had the Secret Service kill her lover and Devin Nunes was the charismatic and brave lone wolf trying to expose the truth? What if Bernie Sanders was a murderous android built by China and Matt Gaetz was the only one who could stop him? What if? Be honest!
Checkmate, progressives!
If that happened, I’m sure the Democrats would be in disarray.
KevinC
1799
I mean, it’s such an easy answer for me. If Warren violated her oath in the manner that Trump has? Yes, I’d be all for impeaching her.
There, were there any other questions? I don’t want Trump impeached because of what political party he belongs to, I want him impeached because of what he has done.
Banzai
1800
Triple thumbs up.
Just look at the dems who have resigned due to inappropriate conduct vs the gop who shout denials loudly and like beer.
It isnt the same on both sides. It is only one side ignoring laws and ethics.
It is hard for me to imagine ever voting for someone as devoid of ethics and character as DJT, but if that somehow happened, and it turned out that person was an anti constitutional criminal, I would totally be in favor of his/ her removal. Checkmate, I guess.
A-freaking-men. What’s more is this seems to constantly be framed in a way that everyone conveniently forgets Trump would be replaced by Pence, not Pelosi or somehow Clinton; the GOP would still keep the White House and would frankly have a far more competent (albeit terrifying in other ways) person running it.
Obviously. If it were President Romney and he went around doing that Romney thing he does, I imagine we’d all be griping like mad and bemoaning the shitty supply side tax cuts and hoping to beat him in the next election and not even mentioning impeachment.
I mean, if Dems didn’t try to impeach that glib lying moron war criminal GWB, then it’s just partisan hackery is demonstrated to be nonsense, right?
(Yes, I know Kucinich, but I’m talking about leadership. Pelosi never came close.)
Enidigm
1805
Republicans, at least older Republicans, will never forgive Democrats for failing to impeach Clinton. Never. On some abstract level the take-away Republicans got from the Clinton impeachment trials is that they now have moral license to do whatever they want.
I’m sure they felt they had that before. Gingrich was Gingrich before the Clinton impeachment. McConnell was the same guy, too.
The essence of the Republican position is no Democrat can ever legitimately hold or use power.
Enidigm
1807
I don’t just mean the leadership but the rank and file. All the disapproving shakes of the head from uncles and grandparents, all the muttering and rumbling from coworkers and business acquaintances, ordinary Republican voting conservatives were now convinced that the Democrats were the enemies of all that is good and right in the world. The Rush Limbaugh-esque narrative had been proven - Democrats don’t care about the rule of law, or decency, or anything at all.
From that moment it seems like in their heart they seemed to decide, a realization that took decades, that all they cared about now was getting as much as they could from a system they had washed their hands of, which they rejected, which they believed to be broken.
David Brooks’ article is basically referencing this. What would you do, Ms. Liberal? Would you vote for decency and the rule of law? And his answer seems to be “No, you wouldn’t - because you had your chance to do so, and didn’t”.
Yet, strangely, Republican voters were hardly all-in on support for the Clinton impeachment. Certainly a majority were for it, but it was nothing like a lockstep Republican litmus test.
A Harris poll a month out from the vote put Republican support for impeachment at 49 / 45 / 5, while on the eve of the vote it was 60 / 35 / 5.
Again in Nov, a CBS News poll found only 48 / 47 / 5 support for impeachment among Republicans. Only 35% thought Clinton should resign. On Dec 13, 34% thought the House should seek a compromise with Clinton — a censure or a fine — rather than vote on articles of impeachment. Another 18% thought the House should simply drop the matter.
There are other, stronger numbers here, but the Clinton case was hardly a slam dunk with rank and file Republicans.
https://www.pollingreport.com/scandal2.htm
That may be, but if so, they should look in the mirror. The only reason republicans were probably going to go with impeachment for Nixon was because public opinion had totally gone against him. (you know, the same thing that would be happening now if a bunch of people didn’t watch and believe 100% of what a bonafide propaganda network spews) Most of them were shrieking the same “WITCH HUNT!” bullshit that you’re hearing now up until the last minute.
At the time I didn’t see why the Clinton/Lewinsky thing was such a big deal, though listening to ‘Slow Burn’ I feel like I understand it a bit better now. In '99 my attitude was: “consensual sex between adults, nothing to do with government, NEXT!”
Also, rando aside, my high school history teacher (a 60s liberal to his bones) said he thought Iran-Contra was way worse than Watergate.
Well, Iran-Contra was about illegally funding the murder of poor people in Central America, so it was pretty bad.
ShivaX
1812
It likely was in a lot of ways. Nixon got in trouble for covering up Watergate more than anything.
Reagan was in the loop at every stage of Iran-Contra.
ShivaX
1813
They literally don’t understand the concept of not being a sycophant to Dear Leader. They don’t understand the concept of country over a person. They think that people worshiped Obama like they do Trump. They think people still worship Hillary Clinton, when the vast majority don’t give a shit. So they try their bothsider bullshit on people who would gladly lock up Warren, Biden, Clinton or anyone else who broke the law. They cannot understand not being in a cult.
It’s pathetic.
The NYT opinion page is pretty much hot take contrarian clickbait at this point:
