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The Witness Chronicles, February 1, 2024

The GOP house of cards and that stupid impeachment (which one? both)

Feb 01, 2024

cherry blossom trees near river — Coming soon. Photo by Redd F on Unsplash

February first already. I knew January would zip by and by golly it did. And it was chock full of Trumpian splendor, capped off by the verdict that he owes E. Jean Carroll $83.3 million on top of the $5 mil he was already fined. And this is just the beginning as the court dates start to pile up.

Oh yeah, he won the Iowa caucuses and the New Hampshire primary, which, to be honest, were not impressive wins when you parse the numbers.

There is something going on here, the ice is cracking in the Trump loyalty, and he seems to be losing his ability to speak coherently, which was never his strength. And Biden has started in with a brutal attack strategy, finally. But there was never any hurry because Trump has not been helping his own case.

Unless of course you are the Republican Party, which once again are showing they have no ideas except obstruction, even when they are handed an immigration package that gives them virtually everything they wanted. Don reached down from heaven and put the kibosh on that because he needs something, anything, to run with.

So much for America and governing.

There Is No Evidence

The House Republicans are wasting our time and money

Everything Congress does costs money, a lot of money. Our money. But everything Congress does that gets us closer to a government shutdown will cost us a lot more money. And we are perilously close.

So, what are they doing? They’re impeaching a Cabinet member for doing his job and they have presented no evidence whatsoever. None, zero, nada. Why? Because there is none. This is a sideshow designed by idiots to avoid doing any real work during an election year.

They are creating a crisis that does not exist to give their candidate something to run on, because he has nothing else to run on. They have accomplished nothing since gaining a tiny majority in the House of Representatives last year.

But the ‘strategy’ is more devious than that. We are, somewhat miraculously, in a major economic upswing in a presidential election year, which almost inevitably means the incumbent, in this case Joe Biden, wins. There is a reason his opponent never talks about real accomplishments.

There aren’t any. Not by the far right of his party. So they impeach a man who has taken on the most difficult challenge we face right now, immigration reform, a challenge they have refused to deal with. Instead they are making a terrible and deadly crisis worse.

Somehow a small but very noisy group of right wing nutcases, mostly from small states and generally unqualified to govern, has hijacked our government. Cabinet Secretary Mayorkas, the target of this farce, is the head of Homeland Security, a vital agency with the massive job of protecting our borders, providing aid during emergencies, securing air travel, and a host of other critical functions in our government.

The man has a lot to deal with. Yet they have him on the Hill being subjected to accusations that have no basis in reality. The hearings are nothing more than a kangaroo court created to give these idiots their minute in the public spotlight.

What they don’t seem to realize is how bad this looks to the rest of us who have to actually do our jobs. Even worse, they somehow have the support of a majority of their spineless colleagues in the Republican Party, who shiver in fear of a man who may well be facing prison time by the time the election nears.

This is known as fiddling while Rome burns. But there is a problem with that idea. Rome is not burning, it is thriving, despite all their efforts to stall, defund, accuse, and play games until bad things happen.

They are not governing, they are degoverning. The only discernible goal is the end of the federal government and turning our union into a mess of squabbling states and blame-gaming.

We are already seeing this in Texas where the Republican Governor ir creating a police state that threatens doctors, ignores the US Supreme Court, lets people die at the border, and ships its problems north rather than working on solutions.

Florida is not far behind in this competition of do nothing positive Republican leadership.

But Texas and Florida are not solidly red states and there are cracks showing in their Republican ranks. Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, one of the most ridiculed and least effective senators from a big state is facing a close fight from a Democrat. Democrats down the line are gaining in Florida where many residents are relocated easterners from dreaded liberal strongholds.

The farce in the House will go nowhere. It has nowhere to go with no fuel to get there. Those pursuing this no this but they have no imagination, no vision, and no ideas. So they make up controversies and imagined crimes with no basis.

This cannot be a winning strategy for any number of reasons, starting with the fact that they have mandate, no clear majority to guarantee success. Even a handful of congress members who defy them can derail the whole ridiculous process, leaving them vulnerable in an election year.

As one of their own, Representative Chip Roy of Texas, has made clear, they will need something to take home to their voters in the fall. A failed impeachment or impeachments won’t mean much to voters looking for real stuff, evidence that they actually work for them.

Btw, Rep. Roy has been encouraging Texas Governor Abbott to defy the US Supreme Court and its ruling that the Biden administration can remove cut wire from the border, wire that is injuring people, but not stopping immigration. Ignoring the highest court in the land is tantamount to declaring secession from the union.

Frankly, I say go. Without Texas’ electoral votes the Republican Party can never win another presidential election.

They’re not working for you or me or the country, they’re working for Donald Trump, a pitiful man who very well may be disintegrating before our eyes, his empire in shambles and his finances in massive debt after losses in court, with many more serious charges lined up against him.

They literally are betting the House on him.

I’ll take the other side of that bet and I’ll bet that I’m not alone. The question is do they care? Are they even capable of caring?

According to the New York Times this morning, there is no evidence against Secretary Mayorkas. But don’t let a few little facts get in the way, just make up some new ones, because voters are stupid chumps, right?

Right.

Note: there are other casualties along for the ride as Republicans refuse to pass an immigration bill, including Ukraine’s fight for freedom against a tyrant and aid for Israel and Gaza, money that could help fend off another world war.

If Trump Goes Down, the Whole Thing Goes Down

It’s a House of Cards

Does the Trump Organization have an extra $400 million in cash lying around? Unlikely, but he may need to pony it up next week based on losses in the New York civil cases and fines. He will appeal but that does not get him off the hook for money.

While appealing, that money must be put in escrow, in case he loses. Sorry Don. We learned this week that a Trump backing SuperPAC has been paying his legal bills to the tune of another $50 million. That money was donated by voters to get him re-elected, not to cover his terrible legal representation.

A revolving door of attorneys dishing out advice that will be ignored, taking the big checks, and heading for the hills. So far, in the first two of many court cases, he has lost and lost big. He doesn’t care because that’s not his money, it is from the suckers he has bamboozled.

These court imposed settlements should have any Republican politician shaking in their boots. They have gone all in on him, defying any logic and supporting a man facing endless court appearances in the year ahead. They have to be asking themselves, what if he goes down?

How do we get out of that mess? I would be asking that and a lot of other questions. As a matter of fact I have to believe that a lot of his supporters in the Party apparatus are making plans to scurry off the ship. But where will they go? And what will he do to them?

It’s an absurd quandary and one the Democrats are content to watch unfold. They have warned time and time again that Trump’s losing record is far longer than his winning record. And they know that with each loss, his party loses more supporters.

The pundits and the polls tell us Trump leads. But these days, with scams left and right, are we going to answer calls from pollsters we don’t know and tell them real stuff? I don’t know about you but I don’t answer ‘caller unknown’ calls.

And I keep my vote to myself, though as a political writer, I think it’s pretty obvious which direction I go in. But imagine a woman, steaming over the abortion rights issue, who keeps her thoughts to herself but finds herself alone in a voting booth with no one ever likely to find out how she cast her vote.

It is still her vote. Nobody else’s. Think about that.

Polling exists to give media outlets stuff to write about and pundits stuff to analyze to death. By nature they must be controversial and anyone who has created surveys knows they can be manipulated to get those controversial results.

I may be nuts, but I see cracks in the armor of the man, the Party, and the hundreds of down ticket elections across the country. They are handcuffed to a man in serious trouble and he has swallowed the key, because in Trump’s mind, if he goes down, the whole thing goes down.

Don’t you think those Republican politicians know that is what they face? If they don’t, we have really elected the wrong people to run our country, at least part of it.

Time for them to go, all of them. If you get a chance, tell them we are watching. We are watching all of them. If they act like citizens or they act like lackeys, we will know and act. They need to know.

The Witness Chronicles, politics decoded

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