I’ll certainly defer to your expertise on this, but it’s too bad there isn’t a “fruits of a poisoned election” clause in the Constitution, because as far as I’m concerned, the whole line of succession is tainted.
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How exactly do you think a legislative minority can accomplish those things? Especially the halt on executive orders?
Just saying, there are things that are within the realm of the achievable and breath used not demanding those and nothing else is counterproductive. Setting expectations with literally impossible demands is an exercise in self-demoralize and a setup for blaming people doing the best they can for not doing what they can’t.
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grumbles A Unicorn could do these things.
What we can do, is maintain a never ending chorus that hangs Trump and all his Russian connections, conflicts of interests and other misdeeds around the neck of every single republican running for office in 2018.
We can also force McConnell to abolish the filibuster, or deal with the fact that nothing on their agenda gets passed in the Senate (Reconciliation is an extremely limited tactic; it won’t work for much going forward).
And recruit, recruit, recruit! Find candidates, find volunteers, activate our base and keep it activated (which is a lot easier right now than some folks realize, and is going to get even easier). The biggest problem we face in 2018 is the Senate, because the republicans up for re-election are almost exclusively in traditionally safe red states. THAT is where we need to be recruiting the most, so the GOP leadership is scared to death everywhere.
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At this point, I’d take Mattis. But he’s sixth on the list . . .
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I realize nothing like that will happen – even though it rightly should. I’m all for our (Democratic and a any ‘sensible’ GOPer) leaders to sit down, discuss the facts, what should be done, what can be accomplished and lay out plans to do so.
I’m guessing that Nunes either saw his own words in the transcript or perhaps his own name was one that hasn’t been “masked out” and he panicked and ran to Trump to ask him for a way out of the mess. Explains his seemingly ridiculous behavior yesterday.
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Honestly, any impeachment results in a dead man walking for the GOP heading into 2020.Pence, Ryan, Hatch, etc…would all be primaried, and whoever came out of the GOP primary will be gravely wounded, probably mortally.
But, the numbers on republican support for Trump are still WAY too high to support any serious discussion of impeachment as a possibility. While his numbers overall are tanking, his support among republicans is still in the high 80s. And while that has dropped from the low 90s…its still THE HIGH 80s. No republican is going to risk facing that back home. Until those numbers break, it won’t even matter if criminal charges are levied against Trump…the House won’t impeach.
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Yup.
And I know you did and will. Which is why I bothered. Remember what Smokey the Bear says.
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“I can’t go into the particulars, but there is more than circumstantial evidence now,”
…
It was a pretty good day for competing leakers yesterday. I hope the games continue today. At this rate DT will be unemployed before my projected date of Oct 1st.
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That too is entirely plausible.
One thing we all agree on
“The boy is running scared”
It might require proof of widespread corruption at the state level in multiple states – hacking voter rolls and databases, interfering with the vote count etc. AFAIK there is no mechanism to void the results of an election.
“Now, we have more than circumstantial evidence”…does that mean that Nunes leaking the intel to trump confirmed what was at the time only circumstantial evidence?
Also whats this about the call that was heard was a personal family matter as reported on CNN?
Common sense please. Common sense is why most criminal convictions are based exclusively on circumstantial evidence. There are too many contacts with Trump associates and Russia. Too much smoke.
Common sense dictates circumstantial evidence shows the nexus with criminal activity.
I think Ryan sees this too.
If we could take down Trump and Pence via impeachment, Ryan could decline the presidency and leave it to Hatch as a capstone to his career. Hatch would not seek reelection in 2020, and Ryan could run and probably face little opposition in the primary.
This is about the best we could (almost) realistically hope for.
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That part I disagree with. Ryan is damaged goods. He will be even more damaged by 2020. ( I also not sure that the Speaker could turn down the presidency if it came to that. I think its part of his Constitutional duties, and thus required.) It’s the price for being Speaker. Now, he may not realize that today, but he will before 2019.
In the scenario, there would definitely be challengers. Cotton for sure, Paul most probably (its part of the family grift now), and maybe a handful of others. But it would be a mortal wound to even have 1 person primary a sitting President, especially one who got there via succession due to impeachment/resignation to avoid impeachment.
The most likely impeachment scenario…and today, its EXTREMELY unlikely to happen due to where Trump is still at with republican voters (over 80% support), is Trump is impeached and Pence isn’t. As more stuff comes out via the Russian investigations, they will be more and more moves to distance Pence and paint him as a stand up guy who was out of the loop on all the bad things. We saw an early version of that with Flynn… It doesn’t have to be entirely believable, just enough to placate Americans who really don’t like the idea of impeaching Presidents to start with.(Despite what republicans like to say,there was never any popular stomach for it with Clinton, and its a big reason why Pelosi took it off the table with W. She knew the American people would reject such a movement. American voters want to decide, not let Congress decide).
Pence then finishes out the term, and the GOP realizing he has no chance in 2020, would move to cram as much legislation through as possible, further damaging their prospects, but getting some lasting agenda items done. Pence would probably run (why not? He has no other career options) and be primaried by someone like Cotton claiming true conservative values and righting America and killing Pence with precisely the same strategy that they used to save him from impeachment…ie, Pence is incompetent, weak and should have stood up/known what was going on.
But again…right now, today…impeachment is not even remotely on the table.
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I think if Nunes thought his new info was truly damaging to trump he wouldn’t be having multiple press conferences. I think it’s all about getting the word about surveillance and wiretapping of trump/trump associates into the news atmosphere to muddy the issue and backstop trump’s false claims.
It’s a classic trump fog machine operation.
Best, I think, is for the proceedings to drag on with Trump disgraced and neutered but in place long enough to influence the 2018 midterms. Then he can be impeached with hopefully a Democratic majority to keep Pence in check. Or if the whole administration gets declared illegitimate, we could move on with a Democratic speaker of the House next in line.
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I totally agree, dearest Eustace. This is one situation where the words “batshit fucking crazy” aren’t even good enough to describe it. We are talking about the fucking President of the United States. I mean, Richard Nixon was an insidious, despicable, corrupt ratfucker beyond measure, but he is Albert Goddamned Schweitzer compared to Trump. The Time interview read like a performance artist with schizophrenia doing a one-man show after swallowing twenty hits of Purple Microdot. I kept waiting for Trump to say, “…and I have a penis the size of Secaucus, New Jersey! You never hear those fake news reporters on CNN talk about THAT!”
I think the spirochetes are finally getting to him, a casualty of the Great Sex Wars he fought instead of being shipped off to Vietnam with common folk.
Funny, I don’t remember Bob Dylan or Pete Seeger or Joan Baez writing any protest songs against chlamydia and gonerrhea during the '60s. Goddamned libtards!