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Not unlike her specious argument that opening an impeachment inquiry in the Judiciary Committee requires shutting down all other committee investigations.
When someone in a position of authority like this throws out unfounded arguments cloaked in procedural arcana, in the hopes that others will be confused and unable to respond because of the intimate knowledge she’s assumed to have by virtue of her position, that’s bullying.
Don’t imagine that this kind of bullying doesn’t work on Members of Congress, either. You’d be surprised at how little even senior Members sometimes understand about their own oversight powers. Some examples: dailykos.com/stories/2007/7…; d-day.blogspot.com/2007/08/ca-con…
The last time Democrats held a majority in the House against a Republican president who flouted their authority, two senior Dems claimed not to know that an Attorney General was impeachable, or even what inherent contempt was.
Can you imagine the chairman of the House Oversight committee not even knowing that there was such a thing as inherent contempt?
Well, it happened. It was a real thing. And we decided to “settle it at the ballot box.” And then, after an 8-year respite, we were right back where we left off. Right where we LET THEM off.
To the extent that Trump was ever capable of observing and learning from actual history, do you think he’d be standing there saying that “the courts” wouldn’t allow an impeachment for obstruction of justice and defying subpoenas if we had just impeached for that very reason?
The “settle it at the ballot box” strategy gave us a Democratic president, true. But it didn’t help Dems hold Congress. And how did Congress do, as an institution, with this strategy? It is confronting the exact same problems, on a vastly inflated scale, just 10 years later.
And the 8-year respite we bought “at the ballot box” was immediately followed by a presidency maniacally dedicated to erasing that 8-year respite. And even before that, it got us a Republican Congress dedicated to “making Obama a one-term president.”
That didn’t work out as planned for Republicans, but they did succeed in undermining everything that president did, not to mention undermining the integrity of those ballot boxes we’re supposed to rely on. Oh, and the integrity of the third branch of government, too.
But back to inherent contempt, and a then-sitting chairman of the Oversight Committee not knowing that it even existed. Everyone knows about it now, because we beat the drums for it at Daily Kos in 2006-07.
Officialdom insisted it was simply not a thing, and bloggers were dumb.
Officialdom insisted it was simply not a thing, and bloggers were dumb.
Similarly, officialdom spent years insisting that changing Senate cloture procedure with a simple majority vote was simply not a thing, and that bloggers were dumb. But we beat the drums for it at Daily Kos from 2009-13. And then it was a thing.
But perhaps we shouldn't have? After all: Neil Gorsuch. Brett Kavanaugh! Other terrible judges who will undo the law, sitting as overt Gimmetarians. Though we did say if Dems didn't do it, Republicans would when they got the chance. That, too, was evidence that bloggers were dumb
Bloggers were dumb, because norms. If Dems resisted the temptation to change blue slip rules, Republicans would be bound by honor to do the same. Nope. But surely if Dems RESTORED the blue slip rules, Republicans would THEN be honor bound to.... Nope. Dumb bloggers!
Well, OK, but we should surely not mess with the filibuster, because if we did, Republicans would do worse. And they did! But not because they never would have had Dems not done so first. The "nuclear option" was their idea. The "constitutional option," they called it.
Still, if Dems didn't actually use it, Republicans would feel bound by honor and tradition not to do so. Because Mitch McConnell is an "institutionalist!" Just look at how dedicated he is to the "Biden rule" about not confirming SCOTUS Justices in an election year. Dumb bloggers!
