OPINION:
Since day one — since before even being inaugurated — President Trump has been subjected to partisan calls for his removal from office. And while here at last, the adults, by way of Republican senators, have entered the room, with a seeming seamless game plan to put a stop to all the impeachment stuff and nonsense, yet the fact is: Even now, Trump is not in the clear.
Even now, the country’s on the cusp of political peril. How so?
It’s when a panicked animal gets cornered that it becomes most dangerous.
Democrats, despite their seeming voting disadvantage in the Senate, no doubt have more sneaky, snaky strategies to play.
Just because Republicans hold 53 seats, just because it only takes 51 votes to move the hearing process along, just because the numbers show impeachment should see a speedy end — the thing is: Democrats lie.
They lie with regularity; they lie with astonishing boldness; they’re habitual, immoral, even sociopathic with their lies.
And just because all seems lost for them on the impeachment front doesn’t mean they’re going to go away, tail between legs and get on with the business of good governing.
It just means they’re going to dig in deeper and double down on their lies.
They’re going to start by demanding witnesses, more and more witnesses — witnesses who, as with those who testified in the House, won’t offer any facts or first-hand accounts, but rather lots and lots of emotionally charged, feigned-outraged suppositions and presumptions and assumptions and theories of what Trump thought when he almost, very nearly, practically (but shh, not quite) did what he’s accused of doing.
Anything to drag out the process.
Anything to make for good media theater.
Anything to give the Democratic-loving press the properly racy Twitter headlines to run roughshod over this president — all the way to the 2020 White House elections.
“We have the right to do it,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said in a press conference aimed at explaining the Democrats’ strategy of pushing for witnesses. “We are going to do it, and we are going to do it at the beginning on Tuesday if leader [Mitch] McConnell doesn’t call for these witnesses in his proposal. We’re allowed to amend it, and ask for them. I am allowed to amend it — and then if they say, well, let’s wait and hear the arguments, we’ll want a vote after they hear the arguments as well, and we will do everything we can to force votes again.”
Summers of Resistance, hear me roar.
Is that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi whispering in Schumer’s ear?
The Democrats’ game book is opened, and it reads like this: Impeach at all costs.
Lying, cheating, deceiving, bribing, strong-arming, blackmailing — these are all acceptable tools of the left’s political trade.
Conservatives are thinking this: Republicans have 53 seats; impeachment is going nowhere. Their view is factual, based on reason, logic, law and order, common sense and the Constitution, and comes calmly, with true concern for the state of the country.
Democrats are thinking this: Trump must go. And their view comes via crazed hate and blind fury, accompanied by a near-zero moral conscience.
In other words: Careful. Democrats, on impeachment, are very much like cornered, desperate animals. They’re not going anywhere without putting up a vicious fight. Underestimating their sociopathic tendencies could prove a Republican downfall.
• Cheryl Chumley can be reached at cchumley@washingtontimes.com or on Twitter, @ckchumley. Listen to her podcast “Bold and Blunt” by clicking HERE. And never miss her column; subscribe to her newsletter by clicking HERE.
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