The Goat Pen

Poe Dameron, of "Rise of Skywalker," speaks for all Democrats today:



"If this mission fails, it's all been for nothing. All we've done, all this time.

Marco Rubio's mind-blowing explanation of his impeachment vote
Analysis by Chris Cillizza, CNN Editor-at-large Updated 2:54 PM ET, Fri January 31, 2020

Here are the key lines from Rubio's statement (which you can and should read here):
"Just because actions meet a standard of impeachment does not mean it is in the best interest of the country to remove a President from office. ...

"... I will not vote to remove the President because doing so would inflict extraordinary and potentially irreparable damage to our already divided nation."

So. What Rubio is saying is this:

1) Trump did the things in regard to Ukraine that have been alleged. ("New witnesses that would testify to the truth of the allegations are not needed for my threshold analysis, which already assumed that all the allegations made are true," Rubio wrote.)

2) Partisan impeachment is bad.

3) He is voting against removing the President

So, and just hear me out on this, what if Rubio, who says he takes as true the allegations against Trump, voted to remove Trump. Wouldn't that make the impeachment bipartisan? And therefore nullify -- or at least mitigate -- the core of his argument that the country would see all of this as nothing more than a partisan affair?

And, more broadly, how can anyone read -- much less write -- this sentence and think that it all makes sense: "Just because actions meet a standard of impeachment does not mean it is in the best interest of the country to remove a President from office."

Huh? So Trump has done things that meet the standard of impeachment but impeaching him for committing impeachable acts would be, uh, bad for our partisan divide? Am I reading that right?

The "why" behind Rubio's statement is much easier to discern than the statement itself.

Rubio ran for president in 2016. He would like to do so again -- maybe as soon as 2024. To do so successfully, Rubio will likely need to walk a very fine line between the Trump faction of the party and the bloc, currently (mostly) in hiding, who believe in a very different version of what the Republican Party can and should be.

Remember, too, that Rubio has some work to do with the Trump folks following his decision to go nuclear on Trump during the 2016 campaign ("You know what they say about men with small hands"). And Rubio's also not beloved by the "Never Trump" crowd (such as it currently exists) because of his willingness to endorse Trump as a candidate and support him as President.

Attempting to please all sides is what produces statements like Rubio's. In trying to thread such a fine political needle, his position on the removal of the President reads like satire. Sure, Trump probably did it. And, yeah, it's impeachable. But I'm not going to impeach him because, uh, partisanship.

Trump's hostile takeover of the Republican Party over the last three years -- and the party's capitulation to it -- has made for strange bedfellows. Fewer are stranger than Trump and Rubio. And, judging from this statement, Rubio and himself.

This clown is totally clueless........

.

Democrats be like Deja Vu all over again

Just how crooked and evil is this Democrat party??

Damn you're a fool

The DNC stole the nomination from Bernie four years ago. They are certainly capable of doing it again. Maybe they will give Biden a massive superdelegate lead at the start of the primary season like they did with Hillary.

Pop Quiz: On which night will the talking heads on the MSM have been the saddest? Circle one of the following:

The night that Trump was elected
The night that Trump was inaugurated
The night the Mueller report was released
The night that Mueller testified before congress
Every night that economic numbers are released
The night Baghdadi was killed
The night the Senate voted not to call witnesses at the impeachment hearing
The night the Senate votes not to remove Trump at the impeachment hearing

yea, they are actively trying to stop Bernie

and who do they want at the moment? The old white Billionaire who is buying the nomination from the people.

you can't make this up.

Coverup

.....a little entertainment for you Rat

Celebrating a cover up is dumb. Didn't America start the revolutionary war to get away from a tyrant? Well, here we are again 244 years later back to square one. Congrats on your "victory". Shameful.

Thank you, Rat!

Anytime my brother

Wait until Wednesday when he is officially exonerated.... Heh heh... let the celebration begin...

Gonna hit McDonald's?

No. Waffle House. Wednesday night is slow dance night.

The Democrats have had 3 years to come up with a plan to address middle America - to fix all the things they say need to be fixed

and what have they done the last 3 years? Everything they can to get Trump out of office. Now that has failed, what will they do? the same thing. After this acquittal, they'll say nothing has changed, that Trump is still a criminal and priority number 1 for America is to bring him down

meanwhile, they have Biden who is on the border of dementia, Warren who says crazy shit like a transgender child will vet her Secretary of Education, and Bernie Sanders who proudly promotes being a socialist as their front runners.

They had 3 years to groom a candidate that would appeal to the masses, that would bridge the gap between the divides, that would develop a comprehensive plan to fix health care, solve the student debt crisis, the homeless crisis and fix immigration

and they did nothing. Not a damn thing. All they have done is focus on Trump and have failed 3 different times to de-legitimize his presidency.

Democrats have refused to accept the results of constitutional democracy ever since [2016]. They reflexively retreat to a belief that Russian election meddling handed the 2016 contest to Trump. And when you point out the problem with the ‘Trump is obviously guilty, but we can’t trust the public to vote him out’ narrative, liberals reflexively assert that interference will sway the 2020 election, too...

But what is psychologically all-too-plausible is that Democrats are in denial about what American voters want and why they rejected Hillary Clinton in a majority of states in 2016. Rather than admitting the painful truth, which is that the Democrats will always have a hard time winning states that add up to a majority of electoral votes so long as they field candidates like Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden, Democrats prefer to imagine that James Comey handed the election to Donald Trump by announcing in October 2016 that an FBI investigation into Hillary Clinton’s emails was being reopened. If the Russians didn’t elect Donald Trump, then James Comey did — anybody but the American people. Because if the American people elected Donald Trump, it means they chose someone even as shocking as Trump over the respectable liberal agenda that Clinton embodied, and which Biden now champions.

The NeverTrumpers, neocons, and a great many progressive pundits stake their self-mythology, their very identities, on the idea that their programs are not controversial or controvertible, but are simply technocratically wise and uniquely morally in line with democratic ideals. They are concerned not only to get their own way, but to get their way without serious opposition — hence the relentless demonization of their opponents as racists, sexists, homophobes, fascists, deplorables, authoritarians, a ‘cult’, illiberals, hicks, and even — most ironically — enemies of constitutional democracy. These are the supporters of the constitutionally elected president we’re talking about as the subjects of those epithets. You can believe that Trump is evil or stupid, and the unelected federal bureaucracy and Deep State are wise and benevolent, but at least be honest with yourself about your attitude toward Americans voters. If you don’t think they’re fit for constitutional self-government, admit it.

https://spectator.us/impeachment-democrats-longer/

E, I see your point but considering it's basically team A vs. team B and everything is basically voted by party lines instead of by heart, the dems won't get anything passed through the Senate anyway. Even if it's good for the country. Same way for the House. These days politicians don't vote based on what their constituents want but rather what their party or there pocket books want.