Dem Rep Holds 3 Different Positions on Impeachment in Less Than 24 Hours
Recent polling suggests that the two weeks of public impeachment inquiry hearings against President Donald Trump had the exact opposite effect as House Democrats intended.
Rather than see an increase in support for impeaching Trump over the contrived Ukraine controversy, surveys show support has dropped dramatically, especially among independent voters.
And that news appears to have a number of Democrats desperately searching for a path out of the box they painted themselves into.
Extricating themselves from the sticky situation has proven to be no easy task for some Democrats. It has caused some to rapidly waffle back and forth between positions on the matter, as proven by the case of Michigan Rep. Brenda Lawrence.
Lawrence represents a strongly-held Democrat district that Hillary Clinton won in decisive fashion in 2016, according to the Washington Examiner.
The congresswoman has long been a proponent of impeaching President Trump. She made her position crystal clear in a SiriusXM radio interview on Oct. 4 with progressive comedian Dean Obeidallah, during which she expressed her misgivings about how Senate Republicans would handle an impeachment trial.
She expressed her fervent belief that House Democrats had to press forward with the effort to oust Trump nonetheless.
“I feel strongly that, for my legacy, for my time in history, sitting here at this table with an oath of office to protect this country, to protect the democracy of the United States of America, I cannot sit silent, that I must move forward with [impeachment] because this is egregious,” Lawrence said.
Her position in favor of impeaching Trump was unmistakable — until a local radio interview on Sunday on the No BS News Hour with host Charlie LeDuff. In that interview, she seemed to walk back her support for impeachment and suggest the House should simply censure Trump and not try to force his removal from office.
“We are so close to an election,” Lawrence said. “I will tell you, sitting here knowing how divided this country is, I don’t see the value of taking him out of office.”
“But I do see the value of putting down a marker saying his behavior is not acceptable,” she continued. “It’s in violation of the office and the oath of office of a president of the United States, and we have to be clear that you cannot use your power of the presidency to withhold funds to get a foreign country to investigate an American citizen for your own personal gain. There’s no way around that.”
“I want him censured,” Lawrence added. “I want it on the record that the House of Representatives did their job and they told this president and any president coming behind him that this is unacceptable behavior and, under our Constitution, we will not allow it. … I am a Democrat, but I am an independent United States of America citizen.”
Those comments reverberated across the national media on Sunday, and for good reason, as it showed that at least some Democrats recognized the divisiveness of impeachment.
Perhaps it also showed that some see the futility of their effort to convince the American people of the necessity to take such drastic measures, particularly in an election year.
But all of that media attention may very well have boomeranged right back on Lawrence — and perhaps she received some stern words from impeachment-obsessed fellow Democrats.
The congresswoman issued a statement on Monday which reversed course once again and put her right back on track in support of impeachment, albeit with the lesser punishment of censure still mentioned as a possible out.
“I was an early supporter for impeachment in 2017,” Lawrence said, according to The Detroit Metro Times. “The House Intelligence Committee followed a very thorough process in holding hearings these past two weeks. The information they revealed confirmed that this President has abused the power of his office, therefore I continue to support impeachment.”
“However, I am very concerned about Senate Republicans and the fact that they would find this behavior by the President acceptable,” she added, suggesting a censure in the House would be a way to avoid impeachment being ended with an acquittal by Senate Republicans.
So, for those of you following along at home, Rep. Lawrence was presumably still in favor of impeachment on Saturday, had backed off and supported a censure instead on Sunday, and was then back to supporting Trump’s impeachment once more on Monday. Good grief.
If this wishy-washiness of the congresswoman doesn’t display an utter lack of any moral compass or a clear vision for congressional action by Democrats, most likely nothing will.
In the end, all of this impeachment nonsense simply boils down to the fact that Democrats don’t like Trump, they want to see him gone, and figure impeachment — rather than relying on their voters — is the best way to go about doing it.
It will be interesting to see if any other Democrats go through such similar public contortions as they attempt to balance their hatred for Trump with a clear lack of public support for their efforts to oust him from office.
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