Guest Post by Pat Buchanan
If the impeachment hearings come, they will be seen for what they are: An attempted coup to overthrow a president by the losers of 2016 who are fearful they could lose again in 2020 and be out of power for four more years.
“History is repeating itself, and with a vengeance,” John Dean told the judiciary committee, drawing a parallel between Watergate, which brought down Richard Nixon, and “Russiagate” which has bedeviled Donald Trump.
But what strikes this veteran of Nixon’s White House is not the similarities but the stark differences.
Watergate began with an actual crime, a midnight break-in at the offices of the DNC in June 1972 to wiretap phones and filch files, followed by a cover-up that spread into the inner circles of the White House.
Three years after FBI Director James Comey began the investigation of Trump, however, the final report of his successor, Robert Mueller, found there had been no conspiracy, no collusion and no underlying crime.
How can Trump be guilty of covering up a crime the special counsel says he did not commit?
And the balance of power today in D.C. is not as lopsided as it was in 1973-1974.
During Watergate, Nixon had little support in a city where the elites, the press, the Democratic Congress and the liberal bureaucracy labored in earnest to destroy him. Nixon had few of what Pat Moynihan called “second and third echelons of advocacy.”
Contrast this with Trump, a massive presence on social media, whose tweets, daily interactions with the national press and rallies keep his enemies constantly responding to his attacks rather than making their case.
Trump interrupts their storytelling. And behind Trump is a host of defenders at Fox News and some of the top radio talk show hosts in America.
There are pro-Trump websites that did not exist in Nixon’s time, home to populist and conservative columnists and commentators full of fight.
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Leftists may still dominate mainstream media. But their unconcealed hatred of Trump and the one-sided character of their coverage has cost them much of the credibility they had half a century ago.
The media are seen as militant partisans masquerading as journalists.
Consider the respective calendars.
Two years after the Watergate break-in, Nixon was near the end, about to be impeached by the House with conviction possible in the Senate.
Three years into Russiagate, 3 in 4 House Democrats do not want their caucus to take up impeachment. Many of these Democrats, especially moderates from swing districts, do not want to cast a vote to either bring down or exonerate the president.
Assume the House did take up impeachment. Would all the Democrats vote aye? Does anyone think a Republican Senate would deliver the needed 20 votes to provide a two-thirds majority to convict and remove him?
For a Republican Senate to split asunder and vote to expel its own Republican president who is supported by the vast majority of the party would be suicidal. It could cost the GOP both houses of Congress and the White House in 2020. Why would Republicans not prefer to unite and fight to the end, just as Senate Democrats did during the Clinton impeachment?
Trump’s support in the Republican caucus in the Senate today is rock solid. Speaker Nancy Pelosi is herself opposed to impeachment hearings in the House, considering them ruinous to her party’s hopes of maintaining control in 2020.
When Dean went before the Watergate committee of Sen. Sam Ervin in 1973, all five days of his testimony were carried live on ABC, CBS and NBC.
When Dean appeared Monday, the three cable news networks swiftly dropped coverage of the judiciary committee hearings to report on a helicopter crash in mid-Manhattan. Dean’s testimony could be seen on C-SPAN3.
Much of America is bored by the repetitive, nonstop media attacks on Trump, and look on the back-and-forth between left and right not as a “constitutional crisis” but as a savage battle between parties and partisans.
The impeachers who seek to bring down Trump face other problems.
Now that Mueller has spent two years and found no evidence of a Trump-Putin conspiracy to hack the emails of the DNC and Clinton campaign, questions have arisen as to what the evidence was that caused the FBI to launch its unprecedented investigation of a presidential campaign and a newly elected president.
Did an anti-Trump cabal at the apex of the FBI and U.S. security agencies work with foreign intelligence, including former British spy Christopher Steele, to destroy Trump?
The political dynamic of Trump’s taunts and defiance of the demands of committee chairs in a Democratic House, and the clamor for impeachment from the Democratic and media left are certain to produce more calls for hearings.
But if the impeachment hearings come, they will be seen for what they are: An attempted coup to overthrow a president by the losers of 2016 who are fearful they could lose again in 2020 and be out of power for four more years.
Russiagate is not Watergate, but there is this similarity:
Nixon and Trump are both the objects of a truly great hatred.
I grew up in a neighborhood that had strict rules we all lived by, not necessarily those according to Hoyle. You were taught to look the other way on some occasions. Societies laws were followed when it made sense to do so. On those other occasions, not so much. I was in my teens when I learned not everyone bought jewelry from the trunk of someone’s car. The cardinal law was that under no circumstances did you blab to the cops. Those sorry saps that did earned the eternal condemnation of us all. The nicest punishment they got was the title they would died with:Rat. That’s what dean is. He was born a fucking rat and he’ll die one.
Big different is Trump didn’t do any of this. The media is a slandering propaganda machine out to destroy him. They ( media ) are just following orders from the owners who are Jewish and will try to destroy any white men. Our once peaceful nation will never have peace again until ALL Jewish influence is removed from the media. Until we do what Hitler did will never” get our nation back”.
Now there is a scary comment. Wow. You get the nation back by forcing those running for office to follow the constitution and laws of the nation not by vilifying and suggesting the destruction of an entire race of people.
Nice BoomerPoast. What’s so scary? Afraid you’ll lose your nation? Hahahaha, muh Constitution is dead, Boomer. If you didn’t want a Reich, you shouldn’t have allowed a Weimar.
Are just plain stupid and ignorant? You think killing 6 million J-ws was a good idea and we should emulate that? Don’t ever say that to my face because you will lose yours and I will give you my location so you can come on down. By the way dumb ass, I am older than the boomers. Idiot.
Stop noticing!
I can’t fathom how a person could be filled with such hatred and anger. How is your opinion any different than Margaret Sanger’s? I truly hope you don’t claim to be Christian because this evil, sir, has no place in His paradigm.
“Assume the House did take up impeachment. Would all the Democrats vote aye? Does anyone think a Republican Senate would deliver the needed 20 votes to provide a two-thirds majority to convict and remove him?”
Does anyone honestly believe that the circus which goes on daily in the “sacred” halls of government mean a damn thing to any of us; save to occupy our attention and provide some illusion of lawful order to placate one side or the other?
This is nonsense plain and simple. We are The Truman Show. The sooner we leave the set the better.
If the Bolshies try this the fuckin country will come unglued. It’s nothing more than an attempted coup and will be identified as such. Folks haven’t been buying millions of ARs and a trillion rounds of ammo just so they can turn ‘em in when some Yankee Jew says so. I believe that a lot of old farts like me are reaching the same conclusion: we’ve worked hard , had a good life and we’ll be damned if a bunch of pussified hipsters and rainbow haired carpet munchers are gonna destroy our grandkids future without a fight. Time to order another case of 7.62.
It should also be noted that the break in at the Watergate had nothing to do with burglarizing the HQ of the Democratic National Committee though that was the concocted cover story. If you read the book by Colodny and Gettlin you will discover the real purpose of the break-in and it is pure dynamite. The book will also give you a better understandig of the real forces behind the silent coup of Richard Nixon.
As Trump has said Bring it ON! Then the fools can bend over and get the high hard one that will drive them crazy on their way down the losers toilet.