Impeachmen' 2: Electoral Boogaloo

[Dill]

(02-16-2021, 08:17 AM)Belsnickel Wrote: I didn't watch any of it because I knew what the outcome would be and knew that the Democrats were just intent on making sure they would be able to write history. I see the impeachment trials as political theater because that is what they are. They are ineffective tools for the oversight Congress is supposed to provide.

Anyway, all that being said I heard an interesting take on Left, Right, and Center this weekend. Tim Carney of the Washington Examiner and AEI was discussing the effort of the House managers and said he actually was swayed by them. Now, he had previously written an article saying, in essence, the impeachment was bullshit. He talked about his problems with criminalizing speech and even though this isn't a criminal proceeding the bar should be the same. He talked about the things that need to be met for incitement and he said he wasn't there, until there was the discussion about Trump on the phone with McCarthy. He said that conversation and things like it are what swayed him and made him see Trump as being responsible for the attempted insurrection. He was aware of what his words were doing. When he tweeted out against Pence after having been told Pence had to be evacuated from the Senate floor, he knew what his words were doing.

Seems to me the impeachment charge, as presented by the House managers, was always centered on the CONDUCT of the president AS PRESIDENT.  Not simply on incitement as a question of free speech. 

In the RWM the issue has been rather successfully cast as limitation of the president's "free speech" as an ordinary citizen, which, if allowed to stand, would place all our 1st Amendment rights at risk and establish precedent for impeaching Harris and Pelosi and Schumer as well. Hence the limitation of the defense's analysis to "the presidents words" which, de-contextualized, are the equivalent to what many Dems have said: "Fight to win." Both sides do it.

On the House managers' side, "incitement" included the act of Trump priming his base with the Big Lie, arranging for them to meet in Washington on the day and time, whipping them to a "peaceful" frenzy, sending them to the Capitol as electoral college votes were to be certified, and "standing by" as people under siege desperately called for help. In the latter phase, the managers made clear that tweeting about Pence to a mob was targeting him for their anger, as rioters repeatedly referenced Trump tweets for guidance--especially the guy reading them aloud over a bull horn.

It sounds like Carney only finally grasped the managers' point when he heard Beutler's account of the McCarthy-Trump phone call.

What would people of twenty years ago have thought, though, if they'd heard that in 2020 a president, after failing 60 court challenges to an election, not only continued to claim that he had really won but called a "rally" on the day the ballots were to be certified by his VP and sent an angry mob to "peacefully" protest at the Capitol during the count?  Would that pre-Trump electorate have had Carney's difficulty perceiving "intent"?

I think that what has come to seem "normal" or at least unremarkable to us would seem a national calamity to previous generations, and there would be no difficulty assigning primary responsibility for the Capitol riot.  It's still a calamity in that the bulk of the GOP still believes the election was stolen and Biden was illegitimate.  The MSM continues to speak as if that issue is settled and the lie is exposed.  But for tens of millions that is only more MSM fake news.