Pelosi Detects Change in Nation’s Political Polarity
In January, 2019, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi disingenuously cited “security concerns” related to a partial government shutdown to delay or, rather, “disinvite” President Donald Trump from the president’s annual State of the Union (SOTU) Address to Congress.
Liberal media gleefully described Pelosi’s decision as “a power play,” “a snub,” a “thumb in Trump’s eye.” Americans who had witnessed them suspected Mrs. Pelosi was really more interested in avoiding another public display of lousy manners and appalling behavior like the spectacles conducted by congressional Democrats during President Trump’s prior appearances there.
House Democrats’ lousy manners and appalling behavior continued throughout the congressional session, culminating in a strictly-partisan presidential impeachment based on the thinnest of pretexts. The word “pretext” is used advisedly.
For example, page six of the House Judiciary Committee’s report “detailing” the “constitutional” grounds for impeachment states that: “The question is not whether the President’s conduct could have resulted from permissible motives. It is whether the President’s real reasons, the ones in his mind at the time, were legitimate. Where the House discovers persuasive evidence of corrupt wrongdoing, it is entitled to rely upon that evidence to impeach.”
Such equivocations inevitably raise questions: 1) If “the House discover[ed] persuasive evidence of corrupt wrong-doing,” how is it possible – for that matter, why is it necessary – to determine “whether the President’s real reasons, the ones in his mind at the time, were legitimate”? 2) Are “mindreading” and suppositional “thought crimes” as constitutional bases for impeachment found in the original text or in Amendments?
They know impeachment is going nowhere in the Senate, nonetheless animosity for President Trump remains congressional Democrats’ true north, the axis point around which the party’s Washington component rotates.
But magnetic north, the variation from the axis that attracts compasses, moves. The one-fourth-plus of attendees at President Trump’s massive rallies who self-identify as registered Democrats represent a political magnetic variation which Mrs. Pelosi ignores at the peril of four additional Trump SOTUs, only with a Republican on-camera in the Speaker’s chair.
There’s evidence that Mrs. Pelosi has detected that polarity shift, her/her party’s vulnerability and blinked. Witness: On the same day the House impeachment vote was taken, Pelosi announced that, after months of stonewalling, she would support passage of a new US-Mexico-Canada Trade Agreement. The House also passed a budget, including border wall funding.
Then, on December 20, Mrs. Pelosi invited President Trump to the House to present the 2020 State of the Union. His appearance there will confuse low-information progressives who assumed that the House impeachment vote – a/k/a, “untried allegations” – magically removed the president.
In February, Pelosi and her colleagues must endure, on national television, Mr. Trump’s recitations of a gangbuster economy, record (including minority) employment, establishment of a U.S. Space Force, government employee family leave, a “Phase One” China trade agreement, and record equity markets, among other consequential successes.
There is much to celebrate. Accordingly, observant Americans will watch President Trump’s SOTU to see if Pelosi and congressional Democrats appear celebratory or merely angry and sullen – again.
