The Impeachment Follies

For your edification, a few thoughts about the impeachment process from emeritus Harvard Law professor Alan Dershowitz. As you know, Dershowitz is one of the few liberals and progressives who have not lost their minds over Trump. He has consistently demonstrated integrity, in calling them as he see them… and as the law requires.

In a recent essay he remarks that the founders of the American republic did not want impeachment to become a partisan political event, a way for one party to punish or to hobble a president from another party. 

Hamilton warned of the “greatest danger” that the decision to move forward with impeachment will “be regulated more by the comparative strength of parties than the real demonstrations of innocence or guilt.” He worried that the tools of impeachment would be wielded by the “most cunning or most numerous factions” and lack the “requisite neutrality toward those whose conduct would be the subject of scrutiny.”

He continues:

Impeachment is an extraordinary tool to be used only when the constitutional criteria are met. These criteria are limited and include only “treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors.” Hamilton described these as being “of a nature which may with peculiar propriety be denominated political, as they relate chiefly to injuries done immediately to the society itself.”

Hamilton distinctly distinguished between the nature of the constitutional crimes, denoting them as political, while insisting that the process for impeachment and removal must remain scrupulously neutral and nonpartisan among members of Congress.

And yet, Congressional Democrats do not care about anything but their fanatical will to destroy Trump. They are conducting a dishonest secretive probe, one that will lead to a partisan vote to impeach. They must know that the senate will never vote to remove... so they are engaging in a grand theatrical performance, largely because the idiots in their caucus do not know how to do anything but to create drama:

It is far more likely that, no matter how extensive the investigation is and regardless of what it uncovers, nearly all House Democrats will vote for impeachment and nearly all House Republicans will vote against it. Such a partisan vote would deny constitutional legitimacy to impeachment. 

Strangely, the Democratic Party wants to remove the duly elected president in the name of democracy. The House of Representatives is the only body that truly reflects the will of the majority. And yet, James Madison did not want the nation to be a democracy. He specifically argued that the nation should be a republic, where the will of the majority of the people should be checked and balanced by other branches of government. 

After all, the Framers explicitly rejected maladministration as a ground for impeachment and removal. James Madison, the father of our Constitution, argued that such open criteria would give Congress far too much power to remove a duly elected president. It would, he feared, turn our republic into a democracy in which the chief executive served at the pleasure of the parliament and could be removed by a simple vote of no confidence.

Of course, if Democrats say that no one is above the law, they should, Dershowitz argued, apply the same rule to themselves.

How many times have we heard from Democrats that “no one is above the law” in reference to President Trump? That is true, but neither is Congress above the law. It cannot substitute its own criteria for those mandated by the Constitution. The House vote may have been necessary to establish procedures. But the partisanship strongly suggests that what Hamilton regarded as the greatest danger may be on the horizon, namely a vote to impeach a duly elected president based not on “real demonstrations of innocence or guilt” but rather on “comparative strength of parties.”

And yet, it’s about more than the comparative strength of parties. When you start hearing Democrats talk about patriotism and their love for the constitution, you have to ask yourself when they started caring about patriotism and the constitution.

In truth, the impeachment follies continues an effort begun at the FBI and the Justice Department, continued by National Security Council holdovers, first, to ensure that Trump not be elected, and second to overthrow the president. In the past it would have been called sedition. They are not just motivated by their hatred of Trump. They are pushing their case because they love Obama more than they care about the constitution or the rule of law. 

Their idolatrous worship of the last president, their horror at seeing his legacy discarded, has caused them to lose all perspective. They and their satraps in the media declared Obama to be the Messiah. Anyone who refuses to accept him as the Messiah belongs to what medieval inquisitors called the unconverted.

They refused to believe that Obama had done anything wrong, that his policies might not have been very good. So deep is their love for Obama that they will do anything, defy any precedent, ignore any tradition, in order to get Trump. And to restore the Obama legacy, what with its dismissal of patriotism and its disregard for of America’s political tradition.