{"id":2454086,"date":"2020-02-04T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2020-02-04T07:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.aspentimes.com\/?p=320301"},"modified":"2020-02-04T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2020-02-04T07:00:00","slug":"john-colson-trump-survives-impeachment-now-lets-get-to-work","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/local-news\/john-colson-trump-survives-impeachment-now-lets-get-to-work\/","title":{"rendered":"John Colson: Trump survives impeachment; now let\u2019s get to work"},"content":{"rendered":"<figure class=\"wp-block-image p402_hide\">\n<div class=\"caption-container\"> <img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"406\" height=\"620\" src=\"https:\/\/cdn.aspentimes.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/5\/2019\/10\/john-colson.jpg\" class=\"attachment-large size-large wp-post-image\" alt srcset=\"https:\/\/cdn.aspentimes.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/5\/2019\/10\/john-colson.jpg 406w, https:\/\/cdn.aspentimes.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/5\/2019\/10\/john-colson-196x300.jpg 196w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 406px) 100vw, 406px\"><\/div>\n<\/figure>\n<p class=\"STND-STND BodyText DropCap\">After suspecting for some time that the national Republican party is interested only in one thing \u2014 holding onto power at all costs \u2014 we have now been shown the best evidence ever that the suspicion is valid.<\/p>\n<p class=\"STND-STND BodyText\">On Jan. 31, GOP senators almost uniformly voted to smother the \u201ctrial\u201d on impeachment articles against President Donald J. Trump, by rejecting a call for further witnesses and documents of Trump\u2019s corrupt act in seeking foreign help to smear presidential candidate Joe Biden and Biden\u2019s son, Hunter, as a way to further Trump\u2019s re-election schemes.<\/p>\n<p class=\"STND-STND BodyText\">Never mind that, since the House of Representatives finished its own inquiry into impeachment, a massive amount of new evidence has come out that Trump was driving a monthslong pressure campaign to get Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to smear the Bidens.<\/p>\n<p class=\"STND-STND BodyText\">And never mind that a number of Democrats acting as impeachment managers, among them Colorado\u2019s own Jason Crow (CD-6), gave stirring speeches urging their Republican colleagues to allow that evidence to be made part of the record in the \u201ctrial.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"STND-STND BodyText\">It seems, thanks to some of this new evidence, that Trump\u2019s extortion scheme \u2014 withholding needed U.S. security assistance until Zelensky agreed to \u201cannounce\u201d the investigation, and also dangling a meeting between the presidents in the Oval Office as further enticement to corruption \u2014 started far earlier than Trump wants us to believe, and involved the president much more directly than we have been told.<\/p>\n<p class=\"STND-STND BodyText\">But the GOP caucus in the U.S. Senate did not give a damn about any of that. All they cared about was hiding any more evidence from the public and keeping Trump in the White House at all costs, in order to keep alive the party\u2019s drive to dismantle as much of the federal government as possible in the year ahead.<\/p>\n<p class=\"STND-STND BodyText\">And now, on Feb. 5, the senate is expected to vote along party lines to keep Trump in power and clear the runways for social, political and procedural mayhem between now and the election in November.<\/p>\n<p class=\"STND-STND BodyText\">In addition to all that, Trump apologist Sen. Lindsay Graham already has called for the Senate to double down on Trump\u2019s crimes by demanding the Senate open an investigation into Joe and Hunter Biden, thereby using the massive resources of Senate investigatory machinery to help Trump get re-elected in November.<\/p>\n<p class=\"STND-STND BodyText\">Which means a hard year ahead for those of us who feel the GOP has abandoned any pretense at preserving our republic, and will work to do as much damage as possible to everything from environmental regulations to the nation\u2019s hard-won social safety net for the poor, the elderly and the downtrodden.<\/p>\n<p class=\"STND-STND BodyText\">Not that it\u2019s only Democrats who will spend the next year hammering away at the sordidly corrupt policies of the Trump administration and its supporters. Even some Republicans have concluded that they have had enough.<\/p>\n<p class=\"STND-STND BodyText\">For instance, an organization known as The Lincoln Project, started by a small group of anti-Trump Republicans, has been airing ads, writing commentaries and generally letting the world know that they want Trump gone as much as any progressives do.<\/p>\n<p class=\"STND-STND BodyText\">Among other things, they recently aired an ad against Arizona GOP Sen. Martha McSally, nominally over McSally\u2019s recent ugly insult to a CNN news reporter (she called the reporter \u201ca liberal hack\u201d and refused to speak on some topic). But The Lincoln Project ad went further, pointing out that she is a Trump follower who had already lost one election for the Senate seat once held by John McCain, and should be prevented from capitalizing on an appointment to fill a different seat with a bid to become a permanent member of the GOP\u2019s Senate majority by running for Arizona\u2019s other, recently vacated Senate seat.<\/p>\n<p class=\"STND-STND BodyText\">But forget about Arizona \u2014 we\u2019ve got work to do here in Colorado.<\/p>\n<p class=\"STND-STND BodyText\">First, we must ensure that our state repeats its 2016 rejection of Trump\u2019s criminally corrupt, certifiably insane, yearslong attack on our government and our society in general.<\/p>\n<p class=\"STND-STND BodyText\">This should not be that difficult. Back in 2016, a sizable portion of Colorado\u2019s electorate bought into Trump\u2019s lies, though not enough to turn over to him our state\u2019s nine Electoral College votes. We can only hope that, since then, Trump\u2019s antics have convinced at least some of his 2016 supporters that he does not deserve a second term in the White House.<\/p>\n<p class=\"STND-STND BodyText\">At the same time, we need to oust Republican U.S. Sen. Cory Gardner, whose devotion to Trump and Trumpism have been solid enough to show that he has no core political morality, and no backbone. He has proven he lacks the qualities necessary to adequately represent our state in Washington, D.C., and he needs to be shown the door.<\/p>\n<p class=\"STND-STND BodyText\">The coming year will be filled with petty tirades and lies from the bratty, aggrieved occupant of the Oval Office, with a supporting cascade of mistruths, misdirection and general crap from his sycophants and enablers in Congress and beyond.<\/p>\n<p class=\"STND-STND BodyText\">And the most important aspect of our work must be to convince voters that their ballot does count, their fears and feelings are justified, and that they must above all come out in force on Nov. 3 and VOTE.<\/p>\n<p class=\"STND-STND BodyText\">We can do this.<\/p>\n<p class=\"STND-STND BodyText Tagline\">Email at <a href=\"mailto:jbcolson51@gmail.com\">jbcolson51@gmail.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.aspentimes.com\/opinion\/john-colson-trump-survives-impeachment-now-lets-get-to-work\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">via:: The Aspen Times<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>After suspecting for some time that the national Republican party is interested only in one thing \u2014 holding onto power at all costs \u2014 we have now been shown the best evidence ever that the suspicion is valid. On Jan. 31, GOP senators almost uniformly voted to smother the \u201ctrial\u201d on impeachment articles against President [&hellip;]<\/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":[49],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-2454086","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-local-news"},"acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-06-30 14:08:43","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":"KSPN The Valley&#039;s Quality Rock","distributor_original_site_url":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn","push-errors":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2454086","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2454086"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2454086\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2454086"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2454086"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2454086"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}