Doug Santo

Kay S. Hymowitz:

“…The top Democratic candidates will soon take the stage at the next debate, and oh boy, are party leaders squirming. Up until late last week, when Andrew Yang made the cutoff by a hair, all six of those making their pitch were white—#debatesowhite, as the hashtag called it. Worse yet, half of those Caucasians are old enough to be carrying Medicare cards. As Frank Bruni wrote in last week’s Sunday column, “for a party that celebrates diversity, pitches itself to underdogs and prides itself on being future-minded and youth-oriented, that’s a freaky, baffling turn of events.”…”

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Frank Miele:

“…Though the people of the great state of California may be happy to see President Trump impeached for coloring outside the lines, the people of the Midwest, South and Mountain West who voted for him to be the Great Disruptor no doubt see things very differently. After watching Congress do nothing for two years except try to unseat the people’s president on a host of trumped-up charges, it is very likely that there will be hell to pay in 2020. That means not just a Trump victory, but also a larger Republican majority in the Senate and very likely a House of Representatives that will flip from the Democrats to the Republicans.

The Democrats, however, did not have to impeach President Trump to seal their doom, at least in presidential politics. The cake was already baked, and the icing on it is Trump’s just-won’t-quit economy. In 1980, Ronald Reagan asked Americans to vote based on whether they were better off than they were four years ago. For the vast majority of folks today, the answer to that question is a resounding yes. Sure, lots of voters still don’t like Trump’s bluster and bravado, but God help the Democrat who comes between them and their 401(k).

Even if you take both the impeachment hoax and the economic renaissance off the table, Trump would still be the hands-down favorite for reelection. That’s because there has always been a clear path to victory for him in 2020, and it goes straight through the Supreme Court. There are several other issues that will boost Trump’s chances for reelection, but none quite as ripe as Ruth Bader Ginsburg. The octogenarian justice is locked in a life-or-death battle (literally) with President Trump to see who can outlast the other.

Trump’s ally, of course, is time. Ginsburg, 86, has beat the clock on numerous occasions, surviving multiple bouts with cancer and other ailments to which the flesh is heir, but actuarial statistics give voters a reasonable expectation that were Trump reelected, he would be appointing a successor to Ginsburg at some point. This also goes to a lesser extent for Stephen Breyer at age 81 and possibly Clarence Thomas at age 71 and Samuel Alito at 69.

Almost everyone agrees that Trump’s promise to appoint conservatives to the Supreme Court energized his base in 2016 and helped to cement his victory. Although liberals will also use this issue to their advantage, it is a safe bet that taking the court back from activist liberal judges will play well for the president in the battleground states…”

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Michael Goodwin:

“…Donald Trump just spoiled the fantasy.

If, as expected, the Democrats’ impeachment dies a quick death in the Senate, it’s not just Speaker Nancy Pelosi who will have been thwarted. Presidential scalp-hunting by a biased media will be another Washington game disrupted by Trump.

Backed by a press corps eager to get Trump, Pelosi felt confident to authorize the flimsy effort to remove the president from office. She assumed media bullhorns would push the public into her camp and that would win her Republican votes for a bipartisan takedown.

She certainly got the media support, but the public and the GOP aren’t following. Indeed, the harder that Reps. Adam Schiff and Jerry Nadler push and the louder the ­anti-Trump media scream, the more the public resists impeachment over the Ukraine piffle.

That was true even before last week’s sensational revelations that the FBI was both corrupt and incompetent in the Russia collusion probe. The report and testimony by Michael Horowitz, the inspector general of the Justice Department, further undermined impeachment by revealing the rampant misconduct in the earlier case…”

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This bullshit where liberals attempt to define innocuous gestures as hate crimes is simply their way of asserting power by causing others to take their lies seriously.

The proper response is a middle finger gesture.

— Kurt Schlichter (@KurtSchlichter) December 15, 2019

They lied over and over again and misrepresented information to the American people. The dossier was completely debunked by the Horowitz report.

“…Rep. Jeff Van Drew, a moderate Democrat who is strongly opposed to impeaching President Donald Trump, is expected to switch parties and become a Republican, according to multiple sources familiar with the situation.

Van Drew is one of two Democrats who voted against opening the impeachment inquiry into Trump and has remained against the effort, even as the House prepares to vote to impeach the president next week.

Van Drew’s congressional and campaign staff were informed he was planning to switch parties on Saturday, according to Democratic sources. The question was now when, not if, Van Drew was joining the Republican Party, according to several Democrats with knowledge of the ongoing conversations.

As of Saturday afternoon, it was still unclear if Van Drew would make the announcement before the House votes on impeachment, which is expected Wednesday.

“It was supposed to be bipartisan, it was supposed to be incontrovertible. It was supposed to be something that was always on the rarest of circumstances,” Van Drew told reporters about impeachment earlier this week. “Well it’s not bipartisan.”…”

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Collin Peterson said he will vote against impeaching President Trump when the issue comes for a vote Wednesday. Peterson said he expects four or five other Democrats will do the same.

Peterson said Trump “has not committed a crime” and most people in the Seventh District don’t think the U.S. should provide foreign aid, so they are not troubled at all if Trump withheld funds to Ukraine. Peterson also said the case against Trump only includes “second-hand” information about Trump’s phone call with the president of Ukraine.

Peterson said the “biggest problem” he has with this impeachment process is that people decided in advance they were going to impeach Trump “and now they’ve spent a year trying to figure out how they can make a case for it. That’s backwards. I just don’t agree with this.”

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