Impeachment Day 1: An In-Depth Analysis

Interestingly, every single Republican senator voted with the Republican leadership on every single vote taken on Day 1. Meanwhile, in a surprise development, every single Democrat voted with the Democratic leadership on every single vote on Day 1. 

In other developments, a new poll has found that if you carefully select your respondents by party affiliation and other related demographic priorities, and frame your poll question in just the right way, you can get a result that shows what you hoped for, breaking down almost perfectly along partisan lines.

Digging into the weeds, however, things become even more, shall we say, obvious.

Alan Dershowitz, a Democrat who loves the Clintons and (on his own account) used to be very fond of the late Jeffrey Epstein, asserts — exactly opposed to his own opinion from twenty years ago — that a president cannot be impeached for anything less than a genuine criminal-type crime, and certainly not for anything so trivial as “abuse of power.” (To which Patterico responds, “Whoever is saying that, ask them what they said 20 years ago. In any event, this argument is both horse droppings, and frightening in its implications. Think about it.”)

On the other hand, David French, who was promoted by neo-conservative elder statesman William Kristol as a last-minute Republican presidential rival for Trump, and who loves John Bolton, the larger-than-life Mystery Witness, says the case for removing Trump on the Democrats’ articles of impeachment is compelling, because the U.S. Constitution offers no other recourse for addressing such presidential abuses of power. 

Beyond that, pretty much the entire “conservative media,” from the unapologetic Trump lapdogs and pole dancers in talk radio and the political blogs, to the cynical bet-hedging careerists who have chosen to market themselves as principled and objective non-cultists, are in agreement that, since their careers as popular figures and successful businessmen would be over tomorrow if they said anything else, they are one hundred percent behind Trump and see absolutely nothing legitimate in any of the allegations against him.

The non-conservative media, i.e., everyone else with access to a microphone or website who claims to have insight and perspective that you lack, is in lockstep in judging the evidence against Trump to be overwhelming.

I have no crystal ball, but I think it reasonable to conjecture that all these people and their various allies will continue to sort themselves out in roughly this same way, straight through to the end of all this, regardless of any facts or new information that might arise.

Now you know the inside story. Stay tuned for further in-depth analysis of the Fight of the Century.

You may also like...