The Democrats have been itching to impeach President Trump since day one of his presidency, and now they’re starting to ramp up the rhetoric:
Unfortunately for the Democrats and their rabid leftist base, Trump isn’t going to be impeached anytime soon. Here are five reasons why.
1. Trump has not committed an impeachable offense. Matt Yglesias argues at Vox that it is necessary to impeach Trump because Trump fired Comey after he “asked Comey to drop investigations of Michael Flynn and tell the public that Trump’s ties to Russia were not under investigation.” Yglesias’ argument may carry some weight if it can be proven that Trump fired Comey for not dropping the Flynn investigation, but more than likely Trump fired Comey because he was tired of the Russian investigation casting him in a negative light, not because he was actually covering up wrongdoing. It could be argued that Trump’s intentions were inappropriate, but it’s certainly not an impeachable offense.
The Impeach Trump Now petition claims that Trump is violating the emoluments clause of the Constitution due to the conflicts of interest with his businesses; while this certainly creates an ethical quagmire for Trump, there has to be evidence that he is making policy decisions that specifically favor his businesses. The petition’s website fails to establish that.
2. The Republicans won’t impeach him. While it only takes a majority vote in the House of Representatives to impeach the president, the Republicans who control the House are very unlikely to pull the trigger on impeachment. Daily Wire editor-in-chief Ben Shapiro elaborated on this in two of his several arguments against the likelihood of impeachment:
7. Republicans Won’t Impeach Trump For Political Reasons. There is no way that Republicans will impeach Trump, and they run the House. The reason is simple: nobody wants to get primaried for impeaching Trump, absent the clearest violation of law in American history. This makes sense — Democrats wouldn’t even vote to impeach Bill Clinton for clear-cut perjury. Partisans will never impeach members of their own party, let alone the most polarizing president in modern American history, a vindictive politician who has shown zero willingness to let personal slights slide.
8. Republicans Won’t Impeach Trump For Emotional Reasons. Trump was absolutely correct when he said that he could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue and not lose his core base of supporters. Trump has a passionate following, and they’d rather go down with Trump than jettison him. As a thought exercise, let’s posit the two most highly-contrasting possibilities available. Possibility #1: Republicans impeach Trump, Vice President Mike Pence replaces him, and Pence then works with Congress to pass every one of Republicans’ core priorities, up to and including Obamacare repeal, tax reform, religious liberty protections, and the rest; Republicans retain the House in 2018 based on their masterful work, and Pence is re-elected. Possibility #2: Trump remains, continues to act like Muppet Beaker in the laboratory, and Republicans lose the House in 2018, at which point Democrats impeach Trump, who goes on to lose to Elizabeth Warren or Kamala Harris in 2020. Would most Republicans favor scenario #1 or scenario #2? The answer, amazingly, is probably scenario #2. Even if most Republicans were to accept the givens here (they wouldn’t, by the way — they’d claim, no matter the circumstance, that Trump is the only path to victory), they’d rather keep Trump around in order to “stick it to the left.” That’s true even if it meant advancing none of their core agenda elements and handing power to the Democrats. It’s more important to bathe in leftist tears, even if leftists get to take the government back and then use it as a club with which to beat conservatives. This fight is no longer about advancing policy. It’s about war with the left, even if that war ends with the Democrats and media shooting the Republican wounded.
Additionally, it’s unlikely that that any Articles of Impeachment would make it out of the House Judiciary Committee, since that too is controlled by Republicans.
Unless the Democrats take the House in 2018 — which is certainly a real possibility — it is very unlikely that Trump gets impeached.
3. Do the Democrats really want President Pence? Trump’s erratic nature and political naivete horrifies many Democrats, but thus far he has shown an unwillingness to undo the major aspects of Barack Obama’s presidency and has been hyping an infrastructure spending bill. Mike Pence, on the other hand, is certainly closer to the conservative movement than Trump is and has a better chance of advancing an agenda that more effectively rolls back the Left’s “progress” than Trump does. HBO’s John Oliver actually got it right on this: (H/T: Vanity Fair)
As Oliver put it, “Pence is a hard-line conservative” whose record on countless issues offers little to recommend him to liberals who don’t like the policy decisions they’ve seen under Trump. “And by the way, if you’re telling yourself, ‘Well, maybe Trump’s impeachment could take Pence down as well,’ well, think about what that would mean,” Oliver continued. “Because then we’d have President Paul Ryan — three words I always knew I’d have to say, but I didn’t really expect to have to say it quite so soon.”
4. A majority of the public isn’t convinced that Trump has done anything impeachable. A recent Harvard-Harris poll found the following:
- 54% of American voters don’t think there is any evidence of Trump-Russia collusion.
- 52% don’t think that Trump campaign officials colluded with Russia.
- 59% don’t think that former FBI director Robert Mueller’s investigation will lead to Trump’s impeachment.
Thus far, the public at large does not appear to believe there are real grounds for impeachment.
5. Impeachment talk is all politics. The Democrats know that in a hyper-partisan, tribalistic political atmosphere, talks of impeachment will electrify their base into voting for them in the upcoming midterm elections. Whether or not the Democrats will actually follow through is another matter, but unless that situation arises, talks of impeaching Trump are just that — talk.