Republicans Are in Danger, Not the Presidency

© 2019 Steve Feinstein. All rights reserved.

Republicans, who are continually naïve and politically inept, have taken to saying recently that the Adam Schiff-led impeachment proceedings are dangerous to the country because they put the very institution of the Presidency at risk. Republicans’ reasoning goes something like this: Impeachment is supposed to be the Congressional remedy if the president commits “high crimes and misdemeanors.” Serious transgressions that put the country at risk: selling military secrets to an adversary for personal financial gain, being party to a premeditated murder or heinous felony, or perhaps some blatantly immoral behavior while in office that distracts the president from adequately discharging his responsibility to the country.

Obviously, according to current Republican thought, nothing like that even remotely applies to President Trump. He is guilty only of defeating Hillary Clinton in 2016 and also perhaps of exhibiting a rough, direct personal/verbal style along the way.

Republicans make two mistakes:

  1. They think that the fundamental/legal illegitimacy of the Democrats’ impeachment charges will eventually lead to them failing or being dropped and
  2. They think that by pursuing an impeachment based on political animus rather than legal solidity, the Democrats are paving the way for any future Congress—regardless of which party is in control—to initiate impeachment action against a future president strictly because of political hatred and jealousy, thus de-stabilizing our political system and putting the very institution of the Executive Office at risk.

The Republicans are wrong on both counts. First of all, the popular (and undeniably accurate) saying around Washington DC is that, “High crimes and misdemeanors are whatever the Congress say they are.” If a majority agrees with the charges, then they go forward. There is no outside legal governing body that authorizes or disallows it. There is no NFL ref who is going to throw a flag and have the play recalled. If a majority of Congress wants it, Congress gets it.

But in order for impeachment charges to have any chance, they must have a stamp of legitimacy from the popular media. If the major media “sanction” the impeachment effort as being at least worthy of investigation, it lives on. If the popular media dismiss such charges as being born strictly from political acrimony and bitterness, it has no legs to stand on and the ordinary casual political participant—upon whom any necessary broad-based popular support will eventually rest—remains uninterested and disengaged.

Democrats enjoy favorable media treatment that Republicans can never hope to duplicate in the current media environment. According to research by the Media Research Center, major media coverage of President Trump has been 90% negative. His positive accomplishments—including a great economy with 50-year low overall unemployment, the lowest-ever Black and Hispanic unemployment, record domestic energy production and near-complete freedom from global energy pricing pressures, a newly-strengthened military, solid job creation and rising wages, getting NATO to step up and pay their share—are continually ignored and suppressed by the liberal media. His so-called “crimes”—imaginary though they are—are brandished about by this same media like fait accomplis, as if they’re well-known, accepted fact.

No such reciprocal situation would ever exist for a Democrat President facing a Republican-majority Congress. These days, if a Republican Congress attempted to bring empty impeachment charges against a sitting Democratic president, the Republicans would be excoriated by the liberal mainstream media, which includes all the highly-influential social media platforms that truly drive public opinion among the critical Millennial and Gen X voting blocs. If the Democratic president happened to be a minority, a woman or a non-heterosexual, then the media would savage the “old, white, straight” Republican Congress to a degree never seen before in the modern media age. The liberal media would take advantage of the opportunity to fire broadsides of bias accusation against the Republican brand, with the intent of inflicting permanent damage to the conservative image. It would be a media feeding frenzy the likes of which American politics has never seen.

Perfect example: Just recently, Democratic Representative Katie Hill resigned after it was discovered she had conducted a bi-sexual 3-way affair with her husband and a female staffer. Yet the liberal media was wholly uninterested, save for a few quotes defending her right to a “private life” and saying that Republicans were trying to use Hill as a distraction from the impeachment investigation. If Hill were a Republican, it would be Mark Foley all over again.

In 2006, Republican Congressman Mark Foley (white, middle-aged) was accused of sending “inappropriate messages” to teenage Congressional pages and forced to resign. The Democrats and the liberal mainstream media pounced on this story, flogging Foley and the Republicans mercilessly with unrelenting public attacks, severely damaging the Republicans’ image and contributing in no small measure to the Democrats re-taking the House in 2006. Hill’s transgressions were far worse than Foley’s. While Foley was merely accused of sending suggestive messages, Hill actually admitted to having engaged in a 3-way affair (coined a “throuple”) with her husband and a female staffer. However, the entire Hill matter faded from the liberal media headlines in astonishingly quick time, with no lasting damage whatsoever to the Democrats.

Another excellent example: Early in 2019, Democratic Virginia Governor Ralph Northam was discovered to have worn blackface in a yearbook picture. Yet despite the offensive picture, there was no liberal media outcry for his ouster, and he didn’t step down, in stark contrast to how the situation would have developed and been resolved had Northam been a Republican.

These are ironclad examples of the media double standard that favors the Democrats and hurts Republicans. Republicans are absolutely delusional if they think that in this media environment an impeachment action by them against a Democratic president could possibly be presented as being legitimate.

The Presidency as an institution is not in any danger from the Democrats’ Trump impeachment efforts. It is the Republicans’ continued existence as a meaningful American political party that is in danger, as they face a potentially crushing defeat brought about by the Democrats’ vastly superior use of the liberal media to their advantage, their devastatingly effective use of street-fighting political tactics, and their remarkable ability to remain unified as a party. Meanwhile, the Republicans foolishly, stubbornly adhere to their self-imposed, stiff, restrictive obedience to a Marquis-de-Queensbury approach to a political life-or-death struggle. If the Democrats are successful in overturning the legitimate results of the 2016 election and they force President Trump from office, the Republicans will have only themselves to blame. If the Republicans fail to come together and stop this, they cannot be considered a viable, functioning political party.