(04-07-2018, 05:13 PM)rollerjag Wrote:

(04-07-2018, 06:58 AM)The Real Marty Wrote: I kind of agree with both of you. 

I would add, impeachment is a high bar to clear, because any representative who votes to impeach would have to face the voters, the same ones who voted the President into office in the first place.  And nothing would fire up a President's supporters as much as the congress overturning the will of the people by ejecting from office the President they elected. 

And the really high bar to clear is conviction, because that requires 67 votes in the Senate, which would be almost impossible if there was no significant crime.  

There would have to be widespread, overwhelming support among the voting public for any impeachment and conviction to succeed.  Last I saw, Trump was around a 44% approval rating.   I would guess it would have to drop to around 25% for any impeachment movement to get any traction at all.  

That's why only two Presidents have been impeached in our entire history, and none have been convicted and ejected from office.  Clinton was impeached, but the vote in the Senate on conviction wasn't even close.   Interesting factoid- Andrew Johnson avoided conviction when a senator who was in the hospital was carried in on a stretcher and voted to acquit.

I doubt Trump gets impeached, and definitely not convicted by the Senate, unless Mueller comes up with a bombshell too big to ignore. Anything that big would probably result in his resignation. Given the success of the fake news hysteria campaign and the discrediting of Mueller, removing him from office would tear this country apart and, even worse, give us President Pence.

The longer this "investigation" drags on, the smaller any potential bombshell becomes.  If there really was anything nefarious that had been uncovered, it would have come to light by now.  The fact that the investigation is having to constantly be redefined to cast a broader net is a pretty good indication that they're not finding squat to bring down Trump, which is clearly the ultimate goal here.  They'll keep hunting for something until they find a traffic violation or some other relatively minor infraction that has absolutely nothing to do with Russian "collusion".  

Seeing Mueller's investigation now encouraging the prosecutor in NY to raid Trump's attorney's office, hotel, and home for something completely unrelated to the investigation is a good indication of just how little they have.  It also sets a pretty scary precedent of how far they're willing to go to bring down a guy they don't want in the Oval Office.  I know from your political viewpoint, that's perfectly fine, but the overreach we're seeing right now is starting to smell like a police state with the establishment unleashing any means necessary to achieve an end they deem satisfactory, the constitution be damned.

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