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[Page S32]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
IMPEACHMENT
Mr. McCONNELL. Madam President, on another matter, every day that the
House Democrats refuse to stand behind their historically partisan
impeachment, it deepens the embarrassment for the leaders who chose to
take our Nation down this road. You can't say we didn't warn them. You
can't even say they didn't warn themselves.
It was less than 1 year ago that Speaker Pelosi said: ``Impeachment
is so divisive . . . unless there's something so compelling and
overwhelming and bipartisan, I don't think we should go down that
path.'' That was the Speaker a year ago.
Back during the Clinton impeachment, it was Congressman Jerry Nadler
who said: ``An impeachment substantially supported by one of our major
political parties and largely opposed by the other . . . will lack
legitimacy.'' Chairman Nadler was right 20 years ago.
At this point, they may wish they had taken their own advice.
Instead, what the country got was the most rushed, least thorough,
and most unfair Presidential impeachment in American history, and now
the prosecution seems to have gotten cold feet. Nearly 3 weeks after
the rushed vote they claim was so urgent, they are still debating
whether or not they even want to see the trial proceed. They voted for
it 3 weeks ago.
The House Democrats say they are waiting for some mythical leverage.
I have had difficulty figuring out where the leverage is. Apparently,
this is their proposition: If the Senate does not agree to break with
our own unanimous, bipartisan precedent from 1999 and agree to let
Speaker Pelosi hand-design a different procedure for this Senate trial,
then, they might not ever dump this mess in our lap.
It is one cynical political game right on top of another. It was not
enough for the House to blow through its own norms and precedents and
succumb to the partisan temptation of a subjective impeachment that
every other House had resisted for 230 years. Now it needs to erode our
constitutional order even further. Those in the House want to invent a
new, sort of pretrial hostage negotiation wherein the House gets to run
the show over here in the Senate.
Meanwhile, they are creating exactly the kind of unfair and dangerous
delay in impeachment that Alexander Hamilton specifically warned
against in the Federalist Papers. This is already the longest delay in
American history between the impeachment vote and the delivery of the
House's impeachment message. It is almost as though this House Democrat
majority systematically took all of the Framers' warnings about
partisan abuses of the impeachment power--took everything the Founders
said not to do--and thought: Now, there is an idea. Why don't we try
that?
Impeaching a President is just about the most serious action that any
House of Representatives can ever take. How inappropriate and how
embarrassing to rush forward on a partisan basis and then treat what
you have done like a political toy. How contemptuous of the American
people to tell them, for weeks, that you feel this extraordinary step
is so urgent and then delay it indefinitely for political purposes. How
embarrassing, but also how revealing.
Speaker Pelosi's actions over the past 3 weeks have confirmed what
many Americans have suspected about this impeachment process all
along--that the House Democrats have only ever wanted to abuse this
grave constitutional process for partisan ends right from the
beginning.
Well, here is where we are. The Senate is not about to let the
Speaker corrode our own Senate process and precedents in the same way.
The first organizing registration resolution for the 1999 Clinton trial
was approved unanimously, 100 to nothing. It left midtrial questions to
the middle of the trial where they belong.
If that unanimous bipartisan precedent was good enough for President
Clinton, it should be our template for President Trump. Fair is fair.
The Speaker of the House is not going to handwrite new rules for the
Senate. It is not going to happen.
Look, these are serious matters. At some point in time, the
Democrats' rage at this particular President will begin to fade, but
the sad precedent they are setting will live on. The American people
deserve a lot better than this.
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