The pursuit of blind power presumes that you, the pursuer, will wield that power always and forever. One example is the infamous nuclear option on appointees. A Democrat dream that under Trump came back to haunt them. Another is Obama’s phone and pen. Persuing Trump out of office is yet another.
Related: So, This Means We Can Still Impeach Barack Obama?
It set a precedent by defining impeachment forever as a legislative act perpetrated by even the barest majority on the slightest whim.
As if only Democrats will even feel the inclination or wield this authority.
The party as a whole suffers from this tunnel vision. They supported a weaponized intelligence surveillance state because it might have unseated someone who was not their president. But that’s not why they weaponized it. The Obama administration used it to spy on the press, congress members, supposed world allies, political candidates, and regular Americans.
It is a product of a swampy Republican majority after 9/11.
America was convinced it was a good idea at the time. Biden and Harris will make Obama’s abuse look like a school prank. A tool they will wield in concert with the public health fascism of the SARS CoV2 response.
The issue is never the reason but the rhyme.
Once you let them, failing a quick and deliberate reduction of the loopholes that allowed the infringement, it will become the new baseline for further sorties against your liberty.
The new Democrat Congress, politically terrified of Trump (and his supporters), despite his departure, overstepped. Lindsey Graham, speaking to a reporter, observed that Donald Trump is “the first president to ever be impeached without a lawyer, without a witness, without the ability to confront those against him, and the trial record was a complete joke, hearsay upon hearsay.”
No witnesses, no defense, just prosecution, driven solely by political will. Guilty!
That’s despotism, people. And if they’d do it to Trump, how do you feel about your chances. Not good?
It is a problem not limited to Trump or Republicans. I asked the question here. “If private citizen Donald Trump can be impeached from a job he does not hold but did, a Republican majority Congress could do the same thing to Barack Obama.” Or, Joe Biden, or as Graham notes in the same interview, Kamala Harris.
“We’ve opened Pandora’s box to future presidents, and if we use this model, I don’t know how Kamala Harris doesn’t get impeached if the Republicans take back the House, because she actually bailed out rioters and one of the rioters went back to the streets and broke somebody’s head open.”
Thinking they deserve it makes matters worse. Elections for public office would become pointless. Appointment by Presidents would as well. The impeachment power unleashed from its chain as has been done by this Congress and the Democrat party turns a tool to address actual malfeasance into partisan cancel-culture bullpookey.
The only check on abuse is that two-thirds of the Senate must agree.
But the Dems are already on that. DC Statehood, along with Puerto Rico, would likely give them four more lifetime Democrat Senate Seats. That much closer to the threshold of unlimited power to unmake any election they choose at any time for partisan purpose.
And always under the assumption that this abuse can never be used against them. Much like Republicans who fast-tracked the Patriot act without considering how future Administrations would use it.
