JONATHAN TURLEY

“…The House has its share of infamies, great and small, real and symbolic, and has been the scene of personal infamies from brawls to canings. But the conduct of Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) at the State of the Union address this week will go down as a day of infamy for the chamber as an institution. It has long been a tradition for House Speakers to remain stoic and neutral in listening to the address. However, Pelosi seemed to be intent on mocking President Trump from behind his back with sophomoric facial grimaces and head shaking, culminating in her ripping up a copy of his address.

Her drop the mic moment will have a lasting impact on the House. While many will celebrate her trolling of the president, she tore up something far more important than a speech. Pelosi has shredded decades of tradition, decorum and civility that the nation could use now more than ever. The House Speaker is more than a political partisan, particularly when carrying out functions such as the State of the Union address. A president appears in the House as a guest of both chambers of Congress. The House Speaker represents not her party or herself but the entirety of the chamber. At that moment, she must transcend her own political ambitions and loyalties…”

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Lindsey Graham

“…So acquittal will happen in about two hours, exoneration comes when President Trump gets reelected because the people of the United States are fed up with this crap.”

“The reason the president was never allowed to go to court and challenge the subpoenas issued is the House managers understood that would take time. President Nixon and President Clinton were allowed to go to Article III court and contest the House’s action. That was denied this president because it would get in the way of impeaching him before the election,” Graham said. “If you think that Adam Schiff is trying to get to the truth, I have a bridge I want to sell you. They hate President Trump’s guts, they rammed it through the House in a way that you couldn’t get a parking ticket and they had a goal of impeaching him before the election.”

“You send this crap over here and you’re okay with it, my Democratic colleagues. You’re okay with the idea that the president was denied his day in court and you were going to rule on executive privilege as a political body. You were willing to deal out the Article III courts because you hate Trump that much. You have weakened the institution of the presidency. Be careful what you wish for because it will come back your way.”

“Ladies and gentlemen, you will come to regret this process,” he told the Senate. “And to those who have these pens, I hope you will understand history will judge those pens as a souvenir of shame…”

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Ed Driscoll strung this together

PAST PERFORMANCE IS NO GUARANTEE OF FUTURE RESULTS:

Shot: Clinton adviser says Democrats will dominate for 40 years.

The London Telegraph, May 14, 2009.

Chaser: James Carville panics over Sanders: ‘I am scared to death…Do we want to be an ideological cult?’

Carville repeatedly suggested the Democratic Party was in danger of following the path of the Labour Party in Britain.

“Look at the British Labour Party,” Carville said. “We’re like talking about people voting from jail cells. Alright, we’re talking about not having a border. I mean, come on people,” he added.

“Of course I would vote for him [Sanders], but I don’t want the Democratic Party of the United States to be the Labour Party of United Kingdom.”

—John Sexton, Hot Air, yesterday.

Hangover: Don’t See That Often: On MSNBC, Carville Blasts Dem ‘Cult,’ Press Going ‘AOC Crazy.’

—Scott Whitlock, NewsBusters, yesterday.

On Iowa

The face of the Democrat party

She hates the President. She lets her emotions control her actions. She behaves like a peevish high school child who can’t sit still.

James Carville on the Democrat party

“…Carville on Biden coming in fourth place in Iowa: “He has had an honorable life in politics. This is just not the time. What’s happened is he blocked out access for my guy Michael Bennet, for Gov. Bullock, blocked out access to Senator Booker, probably some people that were going to run didn’t run because he was in the race. Maybe he’ll come back, but he’s going to have a difficult time. This is not a very good night for him to say the least.”

Carville on who should chair Democratic party: “I don’t know, ask Nancy Pelosi. That’s my idea. Come on, Speaker, get somebody in there. I think this thing in Milwaukee (convention) is not off to a good start. I see all kinds of things that are very concerning there. Also, I’m just looking at the mega polling averages. I’m looking at popular opinion right now and frankly, we’ve got to snap back and get this thing going or — I don’t want to even think about if we had four more years of Trump. But this is so far not so good, that’s my analysis.”

Carville on Bernie Sanders: “Of course I’d vote for him, we don’t have a choice.”

Carville on how the Democratic platform is unappealing: “Look at the British Labour Party. We’re like talking about people voting from jail cells. We’re talking about not having a border. I mean, come on, people. Every day there are people out there struggling. We’re trying to get votes.”

“You’re saying you’re concerned that you consider Bernie Sanders for open borders and for incarcerated people voting?” MSNBC host Ari Melber asked.

“He says he is,” Carville said. “He said we should give people a ticket. Alright. I’m just saying what he said.”

“Of course I would vote for him,” Carville said of Sanders. “But I don’t want the Democratic Party of the United States to be the Labour Party of the United Kingdom.”…”

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Trump uses State of the Union as part of strategy to break Democratic lock on black vote

Democrat’s worst nightmare.

David M. Drucker:

“…President Trump made an unapologetic bid to break the Democratic Party lock on the black vote with a State of the Union address that featured black people and highlighted administration policies geared toward the black community.

Trump’s remarks Tuesday evening came on the heels of a campaign advertisement run during the Super Bowl that spotlighted the president’s commutation of the life sentence of nonviolent drug offender Alice Johnson, a black senior. At least in part to boost support among black voters, a key Democratic constituency, as his reelection campaign accelerates, Trump, before a prime-time television audience, lauded the accomplishments of black people and proposed education reforms to improve access to quality public education for black children…

…Democratic activists have scoffed at some Republicans’ claims that Trump might cut into the Democratic Party’s command of the black vote, an advantage that liberals have enjoyed for decades, but some Democratic operatives are not dismissing that the black vote could have an effect in a presidential election that is expected to be another nail-biter.

Rodell Mollineau, a Democratic strategist, said that, “overall,” Democrats would win the vast majority of black votes in November.

But Mollineau cautioned his party not to ignore Trump’s play: “It’s a reminder that Democrats shouldn’t take the African American vote for granted. Our formula for winning includes driving up African American turnout in Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania. These are going to be close races, and every vote will count.”…”

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Related:

Van Jones:

We’ve got to be clinical about this stuff. We get so emotional about it. That was a warning to us. That was a warning shot across the bow to us Democrats that he’s going after enough black votes to cause us problems. It’s not just suburban votes, he’s going after black votes.

President Trump on American forefathers

The American nation was carved out of the vast frontier by the toughest, strongest, fiercest, and most determined men and women ever to walk the face of the Earth. Our ancestors braved the unknown; tamed the wilderness; settled the Wild West; lifted millions from poverty, disease, and hunger; vanquished tyranny and fascism; ushered the world to new heights of science and medicine; laid down the railroads, dug out canals, raised up the skyscrapers — and, ladies and gentlemen, our ancestors built the most exceptional Republic ever to exist in all of human history. And we are making it greater than ever before!

On the state of the union

GEORGE NEUMAYR:

“…Nancy Pelosi spent much of Trump’s State of the Union address pretending to read a printout of it. She then ostentatiously ripped it up once the speech concluded. The moment captured the bitterness of a partisan watching a president she tried to overthrow moving closer to reelection. Trump delivered an effective address that made expert use of special guests in the audience, from Venezuela’s real president in exile to Rush Limbaugh to the widows and orphans of military heroes. All in all, it was a Reaganesque performance.

Far from derailing his presidency, impeachment seems to have energized it. Trump’s poll numbers are at the highest level ever, and after last night’s successful speech, the Senate will acquit him. Meanwhile, the Democrats are in disarray, reeling from a caucus they couldn’t run, and more bereft of a serious challenger to Trump than ever. Joe Biden’s poor showing in Iowa has exposed the depth of that problem. Already establishment figures, such as Chris Matthews, are questioning the viability of his candidacy. According to the Associated Press, his embarrassing fourth-place finish has donors looking elsewhere, perhaps toward Michael Bloomberg…”

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Journalism

Jennifer Rubin is a rabid nevertrumper. She was semi-normal a few years ago. Trump’s remarkable power is to cause otherwise normal people to destroy themselves.

Crackpot closing arguments as the Democrat’s flail

Adam Schiff Says if You Don’t Oust Trump He’ll Sell Alaska to the Russians and Name Jared Kushner President

Related:

Trump comments on the Democrat’s Iowa disaster

On the failed impeachment

Piers Morgan:

“…By gifting Trump a Super Bowl sized touchdown just as the 2020 election year kicks off the with first caucuses, Schiff and the Democrats have played right into the hands of their opponent.

Make no mistake, this week is going to be an elongated victory lap of epic proportions for the President.

Tomorrow, Trump makes his State of the Union address to the nation, and I’ll bet every dollar I have that he spends large parts of it taunting Democrats for their failed bid to unseat him.

And you can only begin to imagine how gloating he’ll be by Wednesday when he is formally acquitted and his impeachment crashes and burns in a bonfire of Democrat vanity.

The phrases ‘fake news’ and ‘witch hunt’ will dominate Trump’s rhetoric, just as they did when he was cleared by the Mueller report of alleged Russian collusion into fixing the 2016 election.

This will not just be another massive win for Trump, it will be another massive loss for the Democrats…

…It was the most absurd, stupid act of self-harm I’ve ever seen in modern American politics and one that I strongly believe will now help propel Donald Trump back into the White House for four more years…”

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On acquittal

Conrad Black:

“…On Wednesday the Democratic Party is scheduled to be removed from the life support system that has sustained it these past four years: the fraudulently and almost certainly illegally confected condition of Donald Trump being under a legal and ethical cloud.

The wild aspersions about financial chicanery, misogyny, racism, rank ignorance, and incompetence, and the monstrous canard about “treason” with Russia, the Mueller investigation, and the spurious impeachment were all that the Trump-hating media needed to persuade the credulous, within the United States and throughout the world, that this was an aberrant president who was about to be led out of the Oval Office in handcuffs.

Trump’s flamboyant career as a huckster, Trump University, the junk bond casino bankruptcies, as well as the spectacular divorces and constant tabloid and television presence, opened him up for a good deal of ridicule. Not even the most disciplined and fervent Trump supporter would deny that this president’s résumé contains some elements that he would be better off without in his present position, nor would many claim that all of his public comments have been suffused with the dignity and thoughtfulness that would be ideal in the nation’s chief executive and commander-in-chief.

But these facts were part of an innovative, carefully planned, and overwhelmingly successful strategy to achieve celebrity—even among the less exalted socioeconomic regions of the public—and to parlay that celebrity and a perfect sense of timing along with his seizure of social media, to exploit voter discontent, gain control of one of the main political parties, and game the electoral system to victory in a presidential election.

The truth is that even those who supported Trump in 2016, because they were tired of the Bushes and Clintons passing the great offices of the American state back and forth and were dissatisfied with the condition and direction of the country, could not have been serenely confident of what his presidency would be like. Since Trump ran against the entire political class he was portrayed as a nihilist, a quasi-anarchist, and a barbarian—and this was never going to be the usual good-natured and sportsmanlike handing over between the Bushes and Clintons with an indulgent media honeymoon. Since Trump had vehemently attacked all of them, he had to overcome the resistance of all of them.

We now know that a partisan-commissioned smear operation was used by the FBI and the intelligence agencies to defame the candidate and improperly conduct surveillance on his campaign and transition team, and that the FBI director and others lied about it repeatedly to President Trump.

We now know there was no justification for setting up the special counsel to inquire into collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia.

And we now know that when that collapsed, the Whistleblower Act was abused and impeachment procedures were violated to vote on articles of impeachment for the removal of this president for acts that were not, in fact, constitutionally impeachable, were not illegal, and for the commission of which there was no probative evidence that the president committed them.

For four years, NeverTrump Republicans and the Democrats have fought a rearguard action slowly retreating in the face of, to use a Democratic expression, “an inconvenient truth.”…”

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On the Iowa caucus mess

John Podhoretz:

“…The Iowa caucuses reveal not only a Democratic Party deliriously incompetent at handling a vote tally — this from the folks who have been screaming about voting fraud and irregularities for years — but at war with itself in a way that could lead to political disorder that will make the counting disaster look like a garden party.

What little we can glean from entrance polls reveals the way in which the schematics of the intra-Democratic conflict in 2020 are very stark.

It’s Joe Biden with big numbers with people 65 and older — and nobody else. It’s Bernie Sanders with huge numbers among people 18-29 — and mediocre numbers with everybody else.

That likely translated into Sanders running away with college-educated voters and Biden running away with those caucus-goers who have only a high-school education.

Slicing the Iowa pie even more thinly, Biden likely lost a significant number of younger moderate voters to 37 year-old Pete Buttigieg — another suggestion that Biden’s candidacy is, in a state like Iowa, almost exclusively a Geritol candidacy.

This happened in a state that is 92 percent white. New Hampshire, which follows, is 93 percent white. Polling suggests Sanders will win there in a walk, as he did in 2016 — and that his victory there could mean a downward slide for Biden…”

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Doug Santo