Day 308…
The first thing I do when I wake up is to reach for my phone on my bedside table. I do it to check the time, but, these days, it is also to see if any news alerts have popped up.
Sometimes the news alerts are innocuous but sometimes…
This morning, as I woke up, the House was already in session and debating the second impeachment of the President of the United States.
Last night the House adopted a non-binding resolution to call upon the Vice President to invoke the 25th Amendment to remove the President from office.
The vote was largely symbolic because earlier in the day the Vice President had already said that he would not support it. He said to the Speaker of the House, “I do not believe that such a course of action is in the best interest of our nation or consistent with our Constitution. I will not now yield to efforts in the House of Representatives to play political games at a time so serious in the life of our nation.”
The resolution nevertheless passed in the House but almost completely along party lines. The Democratic majority voted yes and the Republicans, with one exception, voted no. The lone Republican who voted yes was Representative Adam Kinzinger of Illinois.
The Republican arguments against impeachment this morning seem largely along the lines of it being rushed. The Judiciary committee has been bypassed. There has been no presenting of evidence and no calling of witnesses.
It seems likely that the impeachment will also pass today with, potentially, more Republican support than the last one had. After that will come the decision of whether or not to send it along to the Senate right away.
A few days ago, there was no way that it was going to be sent over right away, this morning that isn’t nearly as clear. The game of politicking is afoot.
The bottom line is that the Republicans, for the most part, would like to distance themselves from the President. But how to do it is the question. They do not want to alienate the base, but where exactly is the base now? How many moderates, following the coup attempt last week, have now changed their minds and their allegiance?
The Senate has to decide if there is a way to navigate the party away from this President’s control and back into their own hands.
The Senate Majority Leader has indicated that he would not reject whatever the House sends over and has announced that he would not try to control the votes of the other Republicans in the Senate.
That means, that he has freed the members of his party to vote their consciences. There seem to be some who will and some who won’t and some still on the fence. Those numbers should solidify as the day moves forward.
If this ploy works, and the impeachment passes the Senate, what this does is clearly define the divide. It paves a possible path forward for a Republican party without the influence of the President. If it fails, then the President potentially retains a kind of hold over the party for many years to come. If the move to impeach the President in the Senate fails, then the Republicans will never be rid of him.
Republican Senator Liz Cheney of Wyoming is part of a core group of Republicans who, along with the Senate Majority Leader, have signaled that they would vote for impeachment. That’s a big deal.
The Senate Majority Leader will be watching what is going on this morning in the House. He is likely to be canvassing members of his party to try a gauge how many Republicans he can count on to vote for impeachment. If these heavy hitters signaling their support can convince enough of the others, then he will go through with the vote. If he feels that not enough of them will, then we will likely see him delay the vote until after next week when the new Administration takes over. He also may delay the vote until next week just so that he doesn’t need to be the one going out on a limb.
None of these Republicans want to be on the wrong side of this vote. If some vote for it and the rest do not and the President prevails, then those who did are out in the cold moving forward. They could face retribution from their voters and lose their seats.
If the impeachment passes in the Senate, the Senate can then vote to bar the President from holding any further office in his lifetime. That would be the best outcome of all.
As I write this, the House is now voting on a procedural motion which needs to be passed before the actual impeachment can be voted on. This is somewhat remarkable in and of itself because Republicans have essentially given up the floor. Normally, the party opposed to a motion would keep talking for hours bringing up Congressperson after Congressperson to oppose the motion before the vote happens. This morning they have given this the least amount of opposition possible and ceded the microphone.
It is Game of Thrones but with a cast of people that nobody wants to see naked.
I am guessing that almost all of us would just like to be passed this. It’s one thing to watch events like this play out on a television show and quite another thing to actually have to live through it. The results of what we are seeing now is going to change the course of our country’s politics for years if not decades to come. This is a pivotal moment in our history and it’s happening right in front of us.
The insurrection of January 6 is going to be something that historians will continue to refer back to. What will be interesting to see is what happens to the members of government who actively supported the insurgents.
According to the organizer of the “Stop the Steal” rally, three Congresspeople helped him to plan it. Representative Andy Biggs and Representative Paul Gosar of Arizona along with Representative Mo Brooks of Alabama have all been named. The three are either sidestepping the questions or denying their involvement with the rally or the insurrection that followed.
Representative Lauren Boerbert of Colorado is coming under fire for live tweeting the Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi’s location during the attempted takeover. Boerbert is one of the Congresspeople who ran on QAnon conspiracy theories. She repeatedly alerted an angry mob intent on doing the Speaker harm, where the Speaker was in the Capitol complex.
Capitol police had instructed lawmakers not to tell anyone, including their own families where they were during the riot. Earlier that morning, this Congressperson had tweeted, “Today is 1776”.
She is a criminal.
Yesterday Boerbert set off the Capitol metal detector and refused to let security people look through her purse. She is a gun-rights activists and had signaled prior to this that she intended on carrying her glock onto the floor of the House.
Remarkably, she is legally allowed to carry a weapon in Washington D.C. and within the Capitol complex. There are new security measures in place following the events of January 6, however, that now only allow Representatives to have weapons in their offices.
There have been other Republican objections to the metal detector. Representative Steve Stivers of Ohio called them unconstitutional. Several have refused to go through them and sidestep them instead.
Boerbert needs to be expelled immediately and put on trial for treason and sedition at the very least. She is a danger to her fellow lawmakers and to the country as a whole.
We are stuck living through all of this. We can’t fast forward. We can turn it off, but it is going to keep on moving regardless of whether we pay attention to it or not.
Personally, I would rather know what’s going on than not. Worrying about a few things that are actually happening feels like a somewhat better proposition than worrying about a whole slew of things that may or may not actually be happening. I have a rather vivid imagination, so I continually have to stop my trains of thought from derailing me.
“Just the facts, ma’am,” is the famous quote from Sargent Joe Friday on the TV series Dragnet.
Sadly, it turns out that he never actually said that. What he actually said was, “All we know are the facts, ma’am.” The famous quote though remembered incorrectly is still applicable, nonetheless.
There are currently 6,600 armed National Guardsmen in Washington. By the inauguration, that number will rise to 15,000 people. The Capitol Building is now surrounded by a wide perimeter of fencing keeping all but the lawmakers and staff out.
Over 100,000 people have sent the FBI pictures of the coup attempt, identifying the people in them. 200 of the insurgents who stormed the Capitol last week have been taken into custody with more to follow. The piece of garbage who wore the Camp Auschwitz sweatshirt is the latest famously visible one to be arrested. He was picked up yesterday in Virginia.
The debate on the impeachment starts this afternoon. I will likely be out on my daily walk when it does. It’s slightly warmer today that it has been. Still cold, but not bitter.
We are a week away from the inauguration of the President and Vice-President-elect. We should be prepared for more nonsense before then, but we shouldn’t let the fear of what might come deter us from living our lives.
If we do that, they’ve already won.
There are more of us than there are of them. Remember that and take comfort from it.
There are more of us that there are of them.
❤️Love the last line....
watching the news and believing in a beautiful new today into tomorrow