This column cannot hide its feeling that Senator Ron Johnson (R-WI) is the ultimate partisan and that he's one of the worst representatives of our country ever elected. He speaks of the constant torment that the president has endured since he's been elected, but when Chuck Todd called him out for blaming everyone but the president for the situation we find ourselves in, he said that he wasn't blaming others, but he's also not blaming the president? Despite all the finding from the U.S. intelligence community, Mr. Johnson still calls Russia collusion a false narrative. Not to mention that when he is interviewed his tone is erratic and he's always on the defensive which clearly illustrates that he knows the facts are not on his side.
The president's torment is of his own making. Hard. Stop.
There is no one else to blame, but the president and if he conducted government business for the sake of the government and not himself then there wouldn't be impeachment hearings that had begun this week. In two days of testimony State Dept. official George Kent, Ukraine ambassador Bill Taylor and fmr. ambassador Marie Yovanovitch provided a compelling portrait of a president that is more concerned about himself and his reelection than he is about the United States and its security. Obviously, it didn't help that the president tweeted a derogatory message about Ms. Yovanovitch while she was testifying. As Peggy Noonan explained, this was an embarrassment and discomforting to Republicans during the hearing and that they had to change their strategy in as much as they couldn't go on the offensive to start that she is not a fact witness, but only a material one that really had no bearing. With the president's tweet, she, in real time, became a fact-based witness in reacting to his tweet. Self-inflicted torment on the part of the president.
Quid pro quo? Bribery? Extortion? No matter how you phrase it, this is what the president and specifically Rudy Giuliani were up to with regard to Ukraine. The only real argument that is left is that this shouldn't be happening in an election year and that the American people should decide next November. However, Senator Chris Murphy (D-CT) made the cogent argument that this has to happen now because the president's actions are motivated by reelection.
No matter how the impeachment shakes out, despite Danielle Pletka saying most people have already made up their minds about it, it is going to be damaging to the president and his reelection prospects. As Eugene Robinson said, the president is poison to suburban white voters who want nothing to do with him. And speaking of elections, the president has made all the subsequent elections after 2016 about him and it has been a disaster. Despite visiting the state twice in eleven days, a Democrat, John Bell Edwards, won reelection as governor.
The impeachment hearings are only going to get worse for the president given what has come to light with through closed-door testimony and the upcoming Gordan Sondland appearance this Wednesday.
Also...
It pains this column to spell out fmr. governor Deval Patrick's (D-MA)
last-minute entry into the presidential race in cynical terms, but
here's how we see it. Given what he said that he is not going to block
Super PAC money, in which Chuck Todd specifically cited Bain, as in Bain
Capital, one would have to surmise that Mr. Patrick received some
endorsement and advice from such entities. And what does an entity like
Bain Capital see? They don't want another term of Donald Trump but they
also don't see a candidate on the Democratic side strong enough to beat
him. His advisors have most probably told him the Joe Biden is too old and falling in the polls; Elizabeth Warren is too radical in her huge government proposals; and Pete Buttegieg though the best candidate at the moment in his moderation, his elections prospects are in doubt because of his lack of African-American support and the fact that he is gay, which factors into the calculus that America is not ready for an openly gay president. Again, this is the cynical view of why Mr. Patrick is getting in the race.
Panel: Peggy Noonan, The Wall Street Journal; Jeff Mason, Reuters; Danielle Pletka, American Enterprise Institute; Eugene Robinson, The Washington Post
