As far as Democrats and their push for impeachment in what we’ve seen this week, Newt Gingrich
joined us earlier.
The former speaker of the House seemed to suggest, Chris, that the whole thing is going
to backfire on Democrats.
Here’s the former Speaker.
Nancy Pelosi is simply carrying out what is an unconstitutional coup d’état, an effort
to use the power of the Congress to change the outcome for the American people.
It’s a direct assault on the whole idea of representing the American people and instead
imposing Democratic members in Congress as the ultimate electoral college and I think
it’ll backfire very badly.
A year out from the next election, will this whole thing backfire on Democrats, Chris?
Well, we don’t know.
I mean, because we don’t know what the results are going to be.
But I’m a little surprised at Speaker Gingrich, who I greatly respect.
This is the exact opposite of unconstitutional.
The Constitution specifically says that impeachment is left to Congress with very little statement
as to how they want to conduct it.
And in fact, I think I remember that Newt Gingrich did an impeachment effort—led an
impeachment effort against Bill Clinton in 1998.
Was that an effort to overturn an election?
No, he was investigating stuff.
I mean, we may find out that there’s some there there, that there’s no there there.
But to call it unconstitutional or an effort to overturn an election, that’s kind of
a reach, particularly for someone like Newt Gingrich who was involved in the last impeachment
effort.
The thing about Republicans in the Trump era is that every last one of them has footage
or audio or – oh I don’t know – an entire history of impeaching a president from a different
political party that makes them look like complete hypocrites.
So for Newt Gingrich, of all people, who was Speaker of the House during the Clinton impeachment,
to claim all of a sudden that impeachment is this assault on the constitution is just
Republican hypocrisy personified.
To be clear, the House moving to impeach Trump isn’t unconstitutional; in fact, it’s
literally their job to conduct oversight on the executive branch.
You couldn’t find a more constitutional route to take if you tried.
But this isn’t about facts; this is just another partisan Republican throwing the Constitution
under the bus because it’s politically convenient to do so.
If Gingrich truly deferred to the Constitution, do you think he’d be so quick to betray
what it actually says?
It’s almost like – and I hope you’re sitting down for this – he doesn’t ACTUALLY
care about the Constitution.
Gingrich even goes so far as to claim that impeachment is an assault on the idea of representing
the American people, only… a) the American people favor this.
Depending on the poll, the percentage of Americans who now support impeachment has reached a
staggering 58%.
Even Fox News’ own polling is showing a majority of Americans now favor impeachment.
For comparison, polling showed that 57% of Americans supported impeachment for Nixon
when he opted to resign.
So to suggest that our representatives aren’t behaving on behalf of their constituents is
to have your head completely in the sand.
And b) we have elected representatives in place to know the law and defend it.
So when Trump conspired with a foreign power to interfere in our election, when he solicited
dirt on a political opponent from a foreign entity, when he engaged in a cover up to hide
the evidence and instructed his officials not to comply with legal subpoenas, he broke
the law.
And we fully expect that our representatives, whose salaries our tax dollars pay, hold him
accountable and do their jobs.
This isn’t an assault on the idea of representing the American people; it’s the system working
as it was designed to.
Also, since when is the Republican Party in support of defending limitless presidential
power, including the right to commit crimes without fear of any congressional oversight?
The extent to which the GOP has contracted every ounce of what it claimed to once stand
for, all in desperate defense of this criminal, is pretty staggering.
Any, by the way, it’s not just their support for an authoritarian president.
I’m old enough to remember when Republicans pretended the were for family values, before
lining up behind a guy who has spent more money paying off porn stars for affairs he
had while his pregnant wife was sitting at home than most of us will even see in our
lifetimes.
I’m old enough to remember when Republicans were the fiscal conservatives, before lining
up behind a guy who has completely exploded the deficit, perhaps to the point of no return.
The list goes on and on.
The Republican Party doesn’t stand for ideals anymore so much as it’s just some apparatus
to blindly defend Trump and anything that he does, regardless of its legality or morality.
It is nothing more than a cult of personality that’s opted to hitch their wagon to a presidency
going down in flames before our eyes.
Ironically enough, Gingrich was a key player in the demise of the modern Republican Party.
If you didn’t already think that Newt Gingrich was responsible for dragging for GOP into
the bowels of politics when he impeached Clinton for lying about a sexual act – a move so
blatantly political that he LEFT Congress shortly thereafter - rest assured he’s responsible
for the destroying what’s left of it now with his flailing defenses of Trump.