This isn’t a smart diary; I’m not going to provide Kossacks with superb analysis. I’m just another poor American sap who is nearly a member of the walking dead as a result of my brain trying to wrap itself around the fact that Donald Trump is a presidential candidate. My brain is pretty much sucked dry for the effort.
Then I started seeing Internet stories and THEN I overheard some guy in a suit at a lunch spot popular among the white business folks here in rural north Georgia say, in effect, “The best way to keep Hillary from appointing liberal justices to the SCOTUS is to elect Trump then immediately impeach him. Pence becomes president. Big win for conservatives!”
O
M
G
!
Naturally, seeking a safe sane refuge, I ran home to Google if this was common thinking to the degree that it’s an Internet meme. What was I thinking? It goes way beyond a meme. There’s even a Utah law professor, Christopher Peterson, who advocates this strategy — but only on the basis that Trump broke state and federal laws against fraud with his Trump University scam — not as a way to make Pence president.
Professor Peterson indicates. . .
“In the United States, it is illegal for businesses to use false statements to convince consumers to purchase their services,” explained Peterson. “The evidence indicates that Trump University used a systemic pattern of fraudulent representations to trick thousands of families into investing in a program that can be argued was a sham. Fraud and racketeering are serious crimes that legally rise to the level of impeachable acts.”
Further. . .
Peterson also said Congress can push for an impeachment in civil cases — the president doesn't need to be criminally convicted — and that it can consider crimes committed before the candidate was elected to office.
Impeaching Trump must be mainstream since Politico explored the idea — Last April before he was even the nominee (where have I been?).
Some assessments of Trump’s “Impeachability Quotient”. . .
From the right, Washington attorney Bruce Fein puts the odds at 50/50 that a President Trump commits impeachable offenses as president. Liberal Florida Rep. Alan Grayson says Trump’s insistence on building a wall at the U.S.-Mexico border, if concrete was poured despite Congress’s opposition, could lead down a path toward impeachment. Even the mainstream Republican head of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce recently tossed out the I-word when discussing the civilian backlash if Trump’s trade war with China led to higher prices on everyday items sold at WalMart and Target. On his radio show last month, Rush Limbaugh even put a very brisk timeline on it: “They’ll be talking impeachment on day two, after the first Trump executive order,” he said.
In response to Trump’s dismissal of the Geneva Conventions and his sweeping aside of international law in more than one policy position.
“What he’s stated in my judgment would be clearly impeachable offenses,” said Fein, a former Reagan-era Justice Department official who worked on the Bill Clinton impeachment effort. Likewise, Yale Law School lecturer and military justice expert Eugene Fidell offered a similar prediction for Trump from the left. “He’s certainly said things, which if followed through on, would constitute high crimes and misdemeanors,” Fidell said.
Just yesterday, a Republican consultant voiced a wish on behalf of VP nominee, Mike Pence. . .
“I’m sure he’s horrified,” said Mike Murphy, an Indiana public relations strategist who’s known Pence for more than two decades. “We impeached Bill Clinton and we cannot impeach Trump off the ballot. But I wish there was a mechanism to do so.”
Well. . .a little patience is all that may be required. Maybe Mike needs to take lunch with Rush.
It’s perhaps with the possibility of impeachment being actually considered as a strategy that Mike Pence has decided to stay on the ticket. Maybe establishment Republicans have convinced him he’s the anointed savior of the Republican Party. I have no doubt Mike Pence will have no problem entertaining that piece of fiction.
Fiction aside, the impeachment of Donald Trump, should he be elected president, as a political strategy under consideration by insider Republicans, advisors, and conservative pundits is a fact. Vote Trump, get Pence, all’s right with the world..