Waiting to read the Peggy Noonan column condemning egregious activities against Trump

• OK that would be like waiting for Nancy Pelosi to pen one
• Peggy does not realize that for Dem’s to follow her advice it sets up a lose-lose for the yellow-dog anti Trumpers of whatever party
  

Peggy Noonan at WSJ

The Impeachment Needle May Soon Move…

“But the subject matter will probably have to be bigger than the Ukraine phone call, which is not, as some have said, too complicated for the American people to understand, but easy to understand. An American ally needed money, and its new leader needed a meeting with the American president to bolster his position back home. It was made clear that the money and the meeting were contingent on the launching of a probe politically advantageous to Mr. Trump and disadvantageous to a possible 2020 rival.

“Everyone gets it, most everyone believes it happened, no one approves of it—but it probably isn’t enough. People have absorbed it and know how they feel: It was Mr. Trump being gross. No news there.”

The Impeachment Needle May Soon Move...OR AT LEAST MISS PEGGY HOPES SO !

The seriously ‘shop-worn’ Peggy Noonan has never been more excited about a cause than she is about this one…the impeachment and removal from office of President Trump.

As far as Peggy ‘the once great in her mind’ Noonan is concerned American voters have made only one good decision since Ronald Reagan…and maybe she’s even doubtful about that one. The American voter shared this has-been’s ‘wisdom’ only when they sent Barack Obama to the Oval Office.

But then they relapsed again, in Noonan’s view, when they failed to maintain all the positive economic and foreign policy momentum of the Obama years by not electing Hillary Clinton.

There are a lot of sleazy “never-Trumpers” out there but none who more believes that 60 million Americans who didn’t agree with her are irredeemably stupid, as the aging has-been Noonan does.

Her latest is unremarkable in that it is just another column ‘artfully’ attacking Trump and not so subtly touting Nancy Pelosi as a supreme ‘statesperson’.

In this column Peggy attempts to advise the Democrats on how to properly impeach Trump and ‘cleanse’ the White House before those darn ignorant hill billies out there in middle America go and elect him again!     DLH

Noonans latest supportive advice to the Dems: (Annotations by R Mall set apart)

“The mood has shifted against Trump, but the House has to show good faith and seriousness.” 

Her pleading to do it right, but there are so few such bones in that political body

Things are more fluid than they seem. That’s my impression of Washington right now. There’s something quiet going on, a mood shift.

Impeachment of course will happen. The House will support whatever charges are ultimately introduced because most Democrats think the president is not fully sane and at least somewhat criminal. Also they’re Democrats and he’s a Republican. The charges will involve some level of foreign-policy malfeasance.

We are dumbfounded by her insight as regards her last statement — it reminds us of the Woody Allen line about when he was asked if he had read Tolstoy’s War and Peace — he responded – yes. its about Russia”.

The ultimate outcome depends on the Senate. It takes 67 votes to convict. Republicans control the Senate 53-47, and it is unlikely 20 of them will agree to remove a president of their own party. An acquittal is likely but not fated, because we live in the age of the unexpected.  

Our DLH fears there are enough pathetic Republicans in the Senate, which is always possible, but there are lot of evidentiary and political cards yet to be played –  and because this is a political battle and nothing else —  there is a large war chest that we would advise Trump to begin using now to his best advantage.

Here are three reasons to think the situation is more fluid than we realize.
First, the president, confident of acquittal, has chosen this moment to let his inner crazy flourish daily and dramatically—the fights and meltdowns, the insults, the Erdogan letter. Just when the president needs to be enacting a certain stability he enacts its opposite. It is possible he doesn’t appreciate the jeopardy he’s in with impeachment bearing down; it is possible he knows and what behavioral discipline he has is wearing down. 

Ms Noonan never gets weary of Democrat “daily craz”y – their phoniness — hypocrisy – the “fights and meltdowns, the insults”  and thinks the American people do not either — that is a key problem for the Dem’s

The second is that the Republican leader of the Senate, Mitch McConnell, told his caucus this week to be prepared for a trial that will go six days a week and could last six to eight weeks. In September there had been talk the Senate might receive articles of impeachment and execute a quick, brief response—a short trial, or maybe a motion to dismiss. Mr. McConnell told CNBC then that the Senate would have “no choice” but to take up impeachment, but “how long you are on it is a different matter.” Now he sees the need for a major and lengthy undertaking. Part of the reason would be practical: He is blunting attack lines that the Republicans arrogantly refused to give impeachment the time it deserves. But his decision also gives room for the unexpected—big and serious charges that sweep public opinion and change senators’ votes. “There is a mood change in terms of how much they can tolerate,” said a former high Senate staffer. Senators never know day to day how bad things will get. 

Noonan is incredibly oblivious to the prospects that with a  trial by Republicans being entirely fair, it would entail all manner of testimony,  cross-examinations and the likely injection of material into the public record that Democrats, if they proceed with impeachment, will regret. The sober ones, the ones not imbibing with Noonan on a regular basis,  know that and will counsel to avoid impeachment. Tables can be turned.

The third reason is the number of foreign-policy professionals who are not ducking testimony in the House but plan to testify or have already. Suppressed opposition to President Trump among foreign-service officers and others is busting out.

Bring it. Quite a few might have to be subpoenaed from jail which they rightly deserve for their national security lapses, Russia hoaxing FISA abuse, etc., and  others will risk exposing their culpability for their egregious and actionable activity.

The president is daily eroding his position. His Syria decision was followed by wholly predictable tragedy; it may or may not have been eased by the announcement Thursday of a five-day cease-fire. Before that the House voted 354-60, including 129 Republicans, to rebuke the president. There was the crazy letter to Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, which was alternately pleading (“You can make a great deal. . . . I will call you later”) and threatening (“I don’t want to be responsible for destroying the Turkish economy—and I will”). 

The whole matter was an ongoing tragedy but because of Trump’s diplomacy in the form of pursuing economic punishment rather continuing to risk the blood of those there in a militarily token capacity — individuals Noonan apparently prefers risking as triggers for more American blood to be spent for non-allies. Our longstanding Kurdish allies are in Iraq and are not other than by bargain  the Syrian or Turkish Marxist Kurds. And then Peggy Noonan must think shucks —  peace broke out. Noonan thinks she understands the situation there but as heretofore articulated, her thinking is of the depth and nature and emotionalism that whatever Trump does must be wrong

There was the Cabinet Room meeting with congressional leaders, the insults hurled and the wildness of the photo that said it all—the angry president; Nancy Pelosi, the speaker of the House, standing and pointing at him; and the head of Gen. Mark Milley, the new chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, bowed in—embarrassment? Horror? His was not the only bowed head.

And of course Peggy believes the pre-planned walkout by Pelosi, her witchiness, would not rate a disgusted bowed head by Gen. Milley.  Trump bad , everyone else noble.

The president soon tweeted about a constitutional officer of the U.S. House, who is third in line for the presidency: “Nancy Pelosi needs help fast! There is either something wrong with her ‘upstairs’ or she just plain doesn’t like our great Country. She had a total meltdown in the White House today. It was very sad to watch. Pray for her, she is a very sick person!”

As the Democratic leaders departed, he reportedly called out, “See you at the polls.” Mr. Trump is confident that he holds the cards here—he’s got the Senate, and the base of the party says all these issues should be worked out in the 2020 election. But he is seriously weakening his hand by how he acts.

BUT NOT THE UPRIGHT DEM’s!!

That meeting will only fortify Mrs. Pelosi’s determination to impeach him.
The president tweeted out the picture of that meeting just as the White House made public the Erdogan letter—because they think it made the president look good. Which underscored the sense that he has no heavyweight advisers around him—the generals are gone, the competent fled, he’s careening around surrounded by second raters, opportunists, naifs and demoralized midlevel people who can’t believe what they’re seeing.

I’m sorry but that conglomeration constitutes Washington but gosh Peggy is in New York where all the smart people live

Again, everything depends on the quality and seriousness of the House hearings. Polling on impeachment has been fairly consistent, with Gallup reporting Thursday 52% supporting the president’s impeachment and removal. 

Here she exposes that she believes the House tormentors; Democrat propaganda reflected in polls; believes Dems should impeach; will offer advise on doing so and is fine with their current star-chamber proceedings. If the latter is not true we await her actual condemnation. She just hopes they fine tune things for appearances. 

Serious and dramatic hearings would move the needle on public opinion, tripping it into seriously negative territory for the president.

And if the needle moves, the Senate will move in the same direction.

But the subject matter will probably have to be bigger than the Ukraine phone call, which is not, as some have said, too complicated for the American people to understand, but easy to understand. An American ally needed money, and its new leader needed a meeting with the American president to bolster his position back home. It was made clear that the money and the meeting were contingent on the launching of a probe politically advantageous to Mr. Trump and disadvantageous to a possible 2020 rival.  

This analysis of course came from the Joe Biden school of interpretation and action. Even if true Trump has the treaty authority with the Ukraine to ask for help in-prosecuting wrong doing and unlike Joe Quid there was no pro-quo offered.

Everyone gets it, most everyone believes it happened, no one approves of it—but it probably isn’t enough. People have absorbed it and know how they feel: It was Mr. Trump being gross. No news there. 

Well, everyone who is anyone right Peggy?  (but see above comment)

Truly decisive testimony and information would have to be broader and deeper, bigger. Rudy Giuliani’s dealings with Ukraine? That seems an outgrowth of the original whistleblower charges, a screwy story with a cast of characters— Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman, natives of Ukraine and Belarus, respectively, who make you think of Sen. Howard Baker’s question to the Watergate bagman Tony Ulasewicz: “Who thought you up?”  (screwy story indeed)

More important will be a text or subtext of serious and consistent foreign-policy malfeasance that the public comes to believe is an actual threat to national security. Something they experience as alarming.  

The public has come to believe that, have they?  A threat to national security is  maintaining men in a volatile region to serve as springs or triggers for regional war fighting and for who or what?  Where do you start with a person who has such a head full of toys?

It cannot be merely that the president holds different views and proceeds in different ways than the elites of both parties. It can’t look like “the blob” fighting back—fancy-pants establishment types, whose feathers have been ruffled by a muddy-booted Jacksonian, getting their revenge. It can’t look like the Deep State striking back at a president who threatened their corrupt ways.

It will have to be serious and sincere professionals who testify believably that the administration is corrupt and its corruption has harmed the country. The witnesses will have to seem motivated by a sense of duty to institutions and protectiveness toward their country.

And the hearings had better start to come across as an honest, good-faith effort in which Republican members of Congress are treated squarely and in line with previous protocols and traditions.

With all that the needle moves. Without it, it does not. 

If the hearings are conducted honestly, in good faith and openly that is a loosing proposition for the Democrats as their lies, hypocrisy and treachery will be exposed. Assuming a few might have a modicum of  shame and do the right thing for their political survival there will not be an impeachment.  But if the Dems  continue on their unified course Trump will still win due to the unbelievablness of the proceedings and the Democrats will be punished at the polls. Frankly the dye is cast and they will be punished at the polls either way. That is the lose lose of Ms Noonan’s advice to the extent it involves continuing the charade at all.