{"id":1317408,"date":"2019-12-25T21:40:00","date_gmt":"2019-12-26T04:40:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.postindependent.com\/manieri-column-political-rhetoric-speaks-volumes-about-impeachment\/"},"modified":"2019-12-25T21:40:00","modified_gmt":"2019-12-26T04:40:00","slug":"manieri-column-political-rhetoric-speaks-volumes-about-impeachment","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/local-news\/manieri-column-political-rhetoric-speaks-volumes-about-impeachment\/","title":{"rendered":"Manieri column: Political rhetoric speaks volumes about impeachment"},"content":{"rendered":"
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If you observe politics the way I do \u2013 as one stares at a five-car pileup on the freeway \u2013 your gaping will always be rewarded.<\/p>\n

The House voted on Wednesday to impeach President Trump, but the rhetoric in the run-up to impeachment said a lot about the process. If you enjoy political hyperbole, you weren\u2019t disappointed.<\/p>\n

During the debate on articles of impeachment, Rep. Barry Loudermilk (R-Ga.) searched for analogies to make a point about the injustice of Trump\u2019s impeachment and came up with a doozy.<\/p>\n

\u201cPontius Pilate afforded more rights to Jesus than the Democrats have afforded to this president,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Loudermilk said that \u201cwhen Jesus was falsely accused of treason, Pontius Pilate gave Jesus the opportunity to face his accusers.\u201d<\/p>\n

I see his point but I don\u2019t think I would have gone there.<\/p>\n

Trump himself went a little more current in a letter to Nancy Pelosi.<\/p>\n

\u201cMore due process was afforded to those in the Salem Witch Trials.\u201d<\/p>\n

I said \u201cmore current\u201d not recent.<\/p>\n

About Trump\u2019s letter to Pelosi. Five pages and a lot of anger. There\u2019s really no news in it unless it\u2019s news that Trump is really, really upset, or that he likes to use a lot of exclamation points when he writes. He especially likes to use exclamation points at the end of paragraphs.<\/p>\n

\u201cEven worse than offending the Founding Fathers, you are offending Americans of faith but continually saying, \u2018I pray for the president\u2019 when you know this statement is not true, unless it is meant in a negative sense. It\u2019s a terrible thing you are doing, but you will have to live with it, not I!\u201d Trump wrote.<\/p>\n

Beyond the punctuation, the letter covers familiar ground \u2013 Trump\u2019s conversation with the Ukrainian president, \u201cRussian Hoax,\u201d \u201cImpeachment Hoax,\u201d (the capitalization is Trump\u2019s) Joe Biden and so on.<\/p>\n

But wait! There\u2019s more. There\u2019s always more.<\/p>\n

Rep. Carolyn Maloney, (D-N.Y.) said that Trump\u2019s actions are \u201ceven worse than Nixon\u2019s.\u201d<\/p>\n

No, they\u2019re really not.<\/p>\n

During the debate, House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerry Nadler, (D-N.Y.) accused Rep. Louie Gohmert of \u201cspouting Russian propaganda.\u201d<\/p>\n

Nadler apparently believes anyone not in favor of impeaching Trump is a Russian sympathizer.<\/p>\n

Gohmert went back at Nadler demanding a retraction. The two stopped before making fists at each other.<\/p>\n

House Majority Leader, Rep. Steny Hoyer, said \u201cDemocrats did not choose this, impeachment.\u201d<\/p>\n

Yeah, they did, but that was hardly the most interesting thing Hoyer said during the debate.<\/p>\n

He also felt it necessary to mention that while Trump received more electoral votes than Hillary Clinton in 2016, more people voted for Hillary Clinton -, about 65 million compared to Trump\u2019s 63 million votes.<\/p>\n

Kind of a strange point to make during an impeachment debate. What does this have to do with \u201cabuse of power\u201d or \u201cobstruction of Congress\u201d? Nothing at all, unless Democrats view this impeachment as an opportunity to overturn the results of an election which, of course, many Republicans believe is the case.<\/p>\n

As you listened to the rhetoric, one truth emerged, no matter what side you\u2019re on \u2013 this has been anything but a bipartisan process.<\/p>\n

Remember, this impeachment is not part of an ongoing criminal investigation, unlike the Nixon and Clinton impeachments. This is an inherently political and divisive exercise, and it has lacked credibility from the outset.<\/p>\n

Thus, it\u2019s not surprising that the whole fiasco seems to be helping Trump. A Gallup poll released Wednesday indicated that Trump\u2019s approval rating has gone from 39% to 45% since House Democrats began their impeachment inquiry in October.<\/p>\n

Next, there will likely be a trial in the Republican-controlled Senate and impeachment will be dead on arrival as the GOP will present a strong defense of the president.<\/p>\n

That will leave us more divided as a country than we were when this whole thing started and there will be no winners, with the possible exception of Trump himself \u2013 the Democrats\u2019 worst nightmare.<\/p>\n

Perhaps that\u2019s why Pelosi shooshed her Democratic colleagues to keep them from cheering when the impeachment vote was announced. She\u2019s trying to play this very carefully by appealing to her base without looking like she\u2019s taking a victory lap. It seems an almost impossible strategy.<\/p>\n

It wasn\u2019t all theatrics on Wednesday. Pelosi was actually a voice of reason when she said it was \u201ca sad day\u201d for America.<\/p>\n

What\u2019s even sadder is she could have kept it from happening.<\/p>\n

Rich Manieri is a Philadelphia-born journalist and author. He is currently a professor of journalism at Asbury University in Kentucky. His book, \u201cWe Burn on Friday: A Memoir of My Father and Me\u201d is available at amazon.com. You can reach him at manieri2@gmail.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n

via:: Post Independent<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

If you observe politics the way I do \u2013 as one stares at a five-car pileup on the freeway \u2013 your gaping will always be rewarded. The House voted on Wednesday to impeach President Trump, but the rhetoric in the run-up to impeachment said a lot about the process. If you enjoy political hyperbole, you […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[160],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1317408","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","category-local-news"],"acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-09-06 07:38:18","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"distributor_meta":false,"distributor_terms":false,"distributor_media":false,"distributor_original_site_name":"KSKE Ski Country","distributor_original_site_url":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske","push-errors":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1317408","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1317408"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1317408\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1317408"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1317408"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1317408"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}