Why Do Democrats Suddenly Hate Russia?

Posted on January 25, 2020 by LifeZette

By David Kamioner | January 25, 2020

There was a time, it feels like centuries ago, when the Democratic Party fought America’s enemies all over the globe. During a good part of that time the main adversary was the communist Soviet Union.

After unsuccessfully ridding itself of communist influence in the 40s and 50s, Dems like Harry Truman fought the communists in Korea, John Kennedy fought them very badly in Cuba, and Lyndon Johnson fought them in Vietnam. We know how that turned out.

But after the Johnson era in the Dem party it was taken over by appeasers and blatant communist sympathizers like George McGovern, Frank Church, and Ted Kennedy.

For two decades starting in the 1970s the Dems urged patience and caution with the Soviets. They championed every Soviet “peace” initiative that came down the pike. They openly sided with communist forces in the field in Vietnam, El Salvador, and Nicaragua. At the very least they wanted “peaceful coexistence.” At the most, a Soviet parity then superiority to American influence around the world.

But in the 1980s President Ronald Reagan seemed to use the Dems as a reverse barometer. He executed everything they despised from labeling the Soviets an “evil empire” to confronting them behind their own lines. It worked and the Soviets bit the dust on Christmas Day of 1991.

And soon, the Dems fell out of love with Russia.

True, during the Boris Yeltsin era of the 90s the Clinton administration was close to them. But when Putin took over in 1999 the Dems began actively opposing the country. Why?

I would stipulate, because the Russians were no longer communist.

When the Russians were powerful geopolitical rivals they were just fine to Dems. When they were Marxist Leninists, no problem. But have Putin wrap Russia in the Greek Orthodox faith and go bonkers for wild west capitalism and the Dems lose their long term crush on the nation.

This is not an apology for Putin’s Russia. I would not want to live there. But then, I’m not Russian.

What has happened is that the long dormant, then influential, and now dominant authoritarian socialist faction of the Dems, as evidenced in the popularity in that party of Bernie Sanders and AOC, hates Russia for turning its back on communism.

And worse for the Dems, the Russian people like America, Americans, and Donald Trump.

Enough to drive the Dems to barking madness.

This piece originally appeared in LifeZette and is used by permission.

The post Why Do Democrats Suddenly Hate Russia? appeared first on The Political Insider.

In Impeachment’s Obstruction Dispute, Dissembling by Both Sides

Posted on January 25, 2020 by Andrew C. McCarthy

Trump’s team says the House should have gone to court to compel witnesses – but when the House did, they said it wasn’t a judicial question.

What the Founders Told Us about ‘High Crimes and Misdemeanors’

Posted on January 24, 2020 by John Yoo

The historical evidence suggests that a statutory violation isn’t required for impeachment. It also suggests President Trump shouldn’t be removed from office.

Ted Cruz: Democrats Made ‘Very Serious Strategic Error,’ Hunter Biden Testimony Now Needed

Posted on January 24, 2020 by Guest Author

This week, Senator Ted Cruz said Democrats made a “very serious strategic error” in making their case for removing President Donald Trump from office. And, that flub meant that testimony from Hunter Biden, 2020 Democratic Party presidential candidate Joe Biden’s son, was now necessary.

House Managers Made ‘Strategic Error’

“I think the House managers made a very serious strategic error today,” Cruz said to reporters. “Adam Schiff’s arguments to open the day today directly drew into question Hunter Biden and made not only his testimony relevant, which it already was, but it is now critical because the House Democrats have built their entire case on the proposition that any investigation into Burisma and corruption was a sham, that it was completely debunked.”

This is particularly interesting because Schiff has explicitly said including Hunter Biden in the trial was not only unnecessary, but would be an “abuse” of the impeachment process.

Cruz pressed on regarding the former vice president’s son.

Ted Cruz said this week that Dems have made a “very serious strategic error” while trying to bolster their case for removing Trump from office and that the testimony of Joe Biden’s son, Hunter Biden, was now needed. https://t.co/5PJSJJrYDv

— Mike 'Thomas Paine' Moore (@Thomas1774Paine) January 24, 2020

“The problem is there is very significant prima facie evidence of corruption,” Cruz continued. “Hunter Biden, the son of the then-sitting Vice President Joe Biden, was being paid $83,000 a month, a million dollars a year, this is someone with no background in oil and gas, no experience, and at the same time Joe Biden has publicly admitted that he threatened Ukraine, he withheld, or threatened to withhold a billion dollars of aid unless and until Ukraine fired the prosecutor that was potentially investigating the company on which his son served on the board.”

Hunter Biden’s employment by Burisma is curious to say the least.

Democrats are very curious about President Trump’s every move. Hunter Biden? Not so much.

We need to ‘hear the testimony of Hunter Biden’

Cruz added, “If the House managers case is based on the allegations of corruption concerning Hunter Biden and Joe Biden being a sham than it is directly relevant and I got to say the need for the Senate to hear the testimony of Hunter Biden and the need for the Senate to grant the White House lawyers the ability to take that testimony has become all the more relevant.”

Later, Cruz responded to comments made by House Judiciary Committee Chairman and impeachment manager Jerry Nadler during the Senate trial.

“One last observation: Yesterday, representative Nadler threw up great indignation and he said out of hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian companies, how can it be that President Trump was just concerned with this one, this one company Burisma?” Cruz said. “Well, the obvious answer that the House managers ignore is Burisma was the only Ukrainian company that had the son of the vice president that had real prima facie indications of American corruption.”

Sen. Ted Cruz calls on Hunter Biden to testify in the impeachment trial https://t.co/RFCoL2HDl1 pic.twitter.com/F4yW3kBojm

— CNN Politics (@CNNPolitics) January 23, 2020

The Democrats Case For Impeachment Is Getting Weaker By The Day

“We’re not talking about some abstract interest in any sort of corruption that might exist in Ukraine but if you have a sitting vice president making public policy decisions to benefit his family to the tune of a million bucks a year that raises a serious question of corruption and a president not only is justified in asking for that to be investigated, but has a responsibility to see that that’s investigated and that was a question not about Ukrainian corruption, but a question about American corruption and Ukraine being integral in helping investigate whether there was, in fact, American corruption,” Cruz said.

“I think we’re gonna hear another two and a half days of arguments from the House Democrats, but the longer they talk at this point, the weaker the case is getting,” Cruz concluded.

The Democrats case for the impeachment Donald Trump is getting weaker by the day. A Hunter Biden testimony could be its death knell.

The post Ted Cruz: Democrats Made ‘Very Serious Strategic Error,’ Hunter Biden Testimony Now Needed appeared first on The Political Insider.

GOP Senate Staffers: Dems May Not Get Votes for Impeachment Witnesses

Posted on January 24, 2020 by Tobias Hoonhout

10 senior staffers to key Senate Republicans say that flipping more than three votes will be a tall order.

‘With me, there’s no lying,’ Trump says as he lies and lies and lies and lies about impeachment

Posted on January 23, 2020 by Laura Clawson

“Now, with me, there's no lying,” Donald Trump said Wednesday about impeachment. You know what happened next, right? Yup, Trump unleashed a barrage of lies about impeachment. Trump made 14 false claims Wednesday spread out between the press conference in which he said “Now, with me, there's no lying” and interviews with CNBC and Fox Business.

CNN’s invaluable Daniel Dale has the tally: Trump repeatedly claimed, in different ways, that House Intelligence Committee Chair Adam Schiff misled Democrats about what Trump said in his July 25 call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and that once the White House released the call summary, “all hell broke out with the Democrats, because they say, 'Wait a minute. This is much different than Shifty Schiff told us.’” In reality, Schiff’s comments on the call came after the White House released the summary, and the only way Democrats were taken aback by the contents of the call is that it was kind of unbelievable how blatantly Trump worked to extort Zelensky.

Trump also claimed that “I never see them talking about the transcription. I never see them talking about the call, because there's nothing to say.” This is false. He has been impeached as a direct result of the call, and it is still being discussed constantly. Sections of the call were read out on Wednesday as part of the impeachment trial.

Trump suggested that two whistleblowers “disappeared,” when really what happened was that one filed a complaint which kicked off an investigation that corroborated the complaint, and a second whistleblower spoke to the intelligence community’s inspector general but did not make a separate complaint. And, Trump said, “when [Democrats] saw this transcript, they said, ‘We got problems,’” which is, once again, false. Or rather, the problems “they” said “we got” are the problems you get with a corrupt president trying to rig an election.

Other Trump lies included basically anything you can think of about funding to Ukraine: he said “They got their money long before schedule,” which they did not on account of how he held it up illegally. He lied about the type of aid that former President Obama extended to Ukraine. He lied about how much funding Ukraine has gotten from Europe.

Donald Trump lies about everything, big and small, but when it’s about impeachment, it’s almost always big. Usually very big, with the biggest being the fundamental claim that the July 25 call that showed firsthand that he was trying to pressure Ukraine into investigating his political opponents is somehow exonerating. He did what Democrats say he did, and we have it in his own words, released on his authority. No matter how often he lies about it, he can’t change it.

Long, Drawn-Out Trials Are No Way to Convince Anyone of Anything

Posted on January 23, 2020 by LifeZette

By David Kamioner | January 23, 2020

If either side in the Senate impeachment trial of President Donald Trump believes they are benefiting from the non-stop talkfest they are currently engaging in they are sorely mistaken.

The current schedule calls for 24 hours, 24 hours!, of incessant gabbing by the Dems, broken up over three days. Then the GOP gets a crack using the same timeline. 48 hours of political chin-wagging in total.

Yup, 24 hours of continuous talk from politicians on both sides will do the rhetorical trick, ya think? Oh it may convince people of something. It’ll convince them for the need of a noose or a revolver loaded with one bullet after having to endure the kind of torture that would have made WWII Japanese POW camp guards swoon with envy.

It’s a given that pols love the sound of their own voices. But they don’t generally love the sound of the voices of other pols. Does either side actually think that after hour upon hour of verbal assault a senator is going to rise and cry out, “I see it now! I change my vote!”

Not very likely.

This bad sequel to “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington” cannot be designed to sway voters either. What sane voter wants to hear 2 days of a political diatribe even if they agree with half of it?

If you’ve watched the total proceedings to this point, as I have, then you’ve seen the Dems make the same points over and over again. The GOP lawyers will no doubt do the same thing. Thus, the worse indictment of this court schedule?

It’s bad television.

The only possible motivation is to draw out the process. It’ll benefit the GOP, as a tired public will grow more weary of impeachment with every passing day.

It’ll benefit the Pelosi-picked House managers because it gives them national exposure and hours of free advertising.

It may also benefit Biden and other Dem candidates by keeping senatorial candidates Warren, Sanders, and Klobuchar stuck in the Senate while other contenders merrily hop across Iowa.

It is 2020 and the average consumer and voter attention span is that of a flea. Thus 48 hours of excruciating political theater must be seen as a tad too much.

The Dems seem to want to take up every second of it with never-ending argle bargle. When they get their shot in a couple of days hopefully the GOP won’t be so self-obsessed

This piece originally appeared in LifeZette and is used by permission.

The post Long, Drawn-Out Trials Are No Way to Convince Anyone of Anything appeared first on The Political Insider.

Some Democrats reportedly open to boosting Republican talking points with impeachment witness trade

Posted on January 22, 2020 by Laura Clawson

Behind the scenes of the impeachment trial of Donald Trump, some Democrats are reportedly pondering a deal that could go wrong in about a dozen ways. With Republicans blocking witnesses while yelling about Hunter Biden, these Democrats are considering a trade in which they’d get to call White House officials like former national security adviser John Bolton, an actual witness to Trump’s actions that prompted impeachment, and Republicans would get to call Hunter Biden, a Republican talking point with no actual connection to impeachment.

While Democrats have repeatedly said that calling either Hunter or former Vice President Joe Biden would be irrelevant and a distraction, “behind closed doors, a small group of Democratic senators and aides has begun to question that logic, sounding out colleagues on whether to back a witness deal that could lead to testimony from former national security adviser John Bolton or other administration officials with possible firsthand knowledge of the Ukraine controversy,” The Washington Post reports, citing “multiple Democratic officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe the private discussions.”

Some Democrats have sent mixed messages. Sen. Chris Coons said that “If you want to give Joe Biden an opportunity to sit in the well of the Senate and answer the question, ‘Do you think the president acted appropriately?’ go right ahead”—but he also tweeted that “Trials have witnesses, and the witnesses have to be relevant to the case. It isn’t complicated. The President is on trial here, not anyone with the last name Biden. VP Biden and Hunter Biden are not relevant witnesses.”

Sen. Sherrod Brown told CNN’s State of the Union that he was “fine” with a Biden testifying in exchange for administration officials, but on Tuesday he called the idea “a typical Donald Trump-Mitch McConnell distraction that the national media continues to play with and continues to assist them.”

The big question at this point is not what Democrats are saying publicly, though. It’s what they’re talking about behind the scenes.

It is tempting to think that having Bolton or other current or former Trump officials testify could blow this thing wide open, but there are so many risks it’s hard to count them. Like, Hunter or Joe Biden testifies, giving Republicans the distraction they crave, and then Bolton refuses, or Trump manages to block Bolton. Just for starters. The Biden campaign is calling it right, saying that this is a “sad and obvious attempt at diversion” by Republicans.

This impeachment trial is about Donald Trump and what Donald Trump did.