The Rest of the Story

The Rest of the Story
The View from the Middle

Donald Trump is the only President where the opposition party was proposing his impeachment before he was even elected. It seems clear at this point that the Democrats’ effort to reverse the 2016 election has failed, and as Paul Harvey would have famously said, we are all waiting for “The rest of the story”.

To be fair, I don’t believe that the call to President Zelensky was perfect. A true politician, which Trump is not, would have just suggested investigating Burisma, the energy company that Hunter Biden worked for, and not mentioned the Bidens by name. That minor faux pas, however, is hardly grounds for overturning the will of 60+ million American voters. It is absolutely amazing to me that the Party that was so concerned that Donald Trump would not accept the results of the 2016 election has not and will not accept those results once Trump won. This is, however, consistent with the Democrat strategy of accusing everyone else of doing exactly what they are doing.

I also agree with Alan Dershowitz, the Democrat constitutional scholar who admittedly did not vote for Trump. At worst, Trump had mixed motives for investigating the Bidens. He was, I believe, trying to root out corruption in Ukraine before we gave them hundreds of millions of dollars of financial aid, which is not only his prerogative, but his duty as a duly elected President of the United States. Was there a side benefit that he was seeking to hurt a potential political rival? I don’t know, and neither do the Democrats, although they will try to convince you that they can read Donald Trump’s mind with absolute accuracy.

The one thing on which I can agree with Democrats is that there will be consequences to everyone’s actions come this fall. The Democrats will certainly attack the vulnerable Senators who voted against hearing new witnesses in the Senate hearing. On the Republican side, Martha McSally is probably the most vulnerable since she was appointed to her seat just about a year ago and she spoke out adamantly against new witnesses. Susan Collins of Maine will be in for a fight also, but she voted for witnesses so she can at least use that in her campaign. On the Democrat side, Doug Jones is a dead man in Alabama. I predict that he will vote to acquit President Trump, but this will not be enough to save him if his opponent is not a registered sex offender or convicted drug trafficker. This is Jeff Sessions’ old seat and has been a reliable Republican position for many years. My prediction is that the Senate will remain in Republican hands.

The House is the real wild card. Here, the “consequences” will fall on the Democrats. The impeachment process in the House was totally biased and partisan. In fact, the only bi-partisan aspect of the House impeachment process was in its rejection of the impeachment effort. Every Republican voted against both articles of impeachment and four Democrats voted with them on one or both articles or voted “present”. We even had one Democrat change parties as a result of the Pelosi’s impeachment effort, Jeff Van Drew of New Jersey. This was all after Nancy Pelosi said that any impeachment effort had to be overwhelming and bi-partisan. It was neither, and I believe Democrats in the House will pay a price. The rigged, partisan process in the House will rally Trump supporters and I predict they will lose seats. Will it be enough to give Republicans the majority? I don’t know, but Trump will be working hard to see that it will.

Those predictions are part of what I believe the future will hold for us, but here is the real “Rest of the Story”. I can only hope that President Trump will offer an olive branch or two to Democrats in his State of the Union speech on Tuesday. It is sad that Democrats wouldn’t allow this vote to occur before his speech, which would have been a nice gesture, but I’m hoping that the President can look past this and paint a path of cooperation for the next year. This could come in the form of talking about infrastructure improvements for the country, or immigration reform or even improved healthcare. I must admit that if I don’t see the President reach across the aisle on Tuesday, I will be disappointed.

For Democrats, they must simply grasp the olive branch and promise to focus on “The People’s” business for the rest of the year and give up on their obsession on investigations. If both of these things happen, it will actually enhance the positions of both parties in the fall and will, for certain, benefit the American people. I can only hope that the “Rest of the Story” come Tuesday night is a truce between the Democrat and Republican parties and détente amongst our citizens.