Listen To Lindsey December 17, 2019December 16, 2019 On the eve of the impeachment vote, take one minute to listen. Lindsey Graham is so right! “Impeachment is not about punishment; impeachment is about cleansing the office.” Maybe that clip was a little extreme, given the entirely personal nature of the offense. Clinton was neither obstructing justice nor obstructing Congress. (Nor orchestrating campaign malfeasance; nor misusing $391 million in taxpayer money in a way aides immediately knew was wrong; nor simply disgracing his office.) But Lindsey led the charge anyway. And for those who’ve already made up their minds nothing Trump has done is impeachable? Take one more minute to listen to Lindsey again! Esteemed reader George Mokray notes: “Impeachment Was Inevitable No Matter Who Won in 2016.” . . . “You’ve got some Republicans in Congress who are already suggesting they will impeach Hillary,” Obama added, his voice rising. “She hasn’t even been elected yet. And it doesn’t matter what evidence they just — they’ll find something. That’s what they’re saying already.” Why Democrats don’t play back these quotes to the Republicans who say that the Democrats have been trying to impeach Trump since the 2016 election is beyond me. Yes, the Democrats have wanted to impeach Trump since the moment it became clear he would be President but the Republicans were already planning to impeach Hillary Clinton, and said so, before the vote was counted. Gander meet goose. . . . → But of course, there’s one spectacular difference. And it is that Hillary did nothing impeachable as president. As to her decades of public service, Republicans led no fewer than eight Benghazi investigations (which were politically motivated witch hunts) and found she did noting wrong. And her use of a private e-mail server while Secretary of State — though a mistake — pales beside the things Trump has done in his decades of avoiding public service (and taxes) and in his three years as president. Allen Brand: “After these hearings and endless commentaries, still can’t believe the Dems let the comment go unchallenged: ’63 million voted for him.’ Yes, but, 73 million voted against him!” Dan Magraw: “The impeachment-trial collaboration between McConnell and Trump violates every legal and constitutional test one can imagine.” Our Republicans friends believe it’s okay to hold up Congressionally-mandated aid to an ally under attack from Russia — to Russia’s delight — if you need that ally to do you a personal favor. It’s okay to defy Congressional subpoenas. It’s okay to obstruct justice. It’s okay to deny the oversight the Constitution grants Congress. It’s okay to deny the climate crisis (not impeachable — merely catastrophic, possibly existential). It’s okay to add trillions to the Debt in good times (not impeachable; standard operating procedure for Republicans from Reagan on). It’s okay to blast Hillary for the child sex ring she ran out of the basement of a pizza shop (that had no basement) and for the $2 million she took from the Clinton Foundation to pay for Chelsea’s wedding (even though she didn’t). It’s okay (if mildly regrettable) for the President of the United States to lie constantly and to use words like “scumbag” and “bullshit” when speaking in public. This is not the Republican Party I once knew, or that Mitt Romney or John McCain or Dwight Eisenhower or Teddy Roosevelt — or Gerald Ford or Bush 41 — or even Nixon and Reagan and Bush 43 — once knew. Yet some of our friends support it. We need to let them know they will be warmly welcome as independents or moderate Democrats until they get their party back.