Nancy Pelosi and other Democratic leaders are right: This is no time to babble about impeaching President Trump.
Of course, that hasn’t stopped a few Democratic politicians and partisans from doing it, now that Democrats have a majority in the House of Representatives and can do some serious poking and prodding into the Republican president’s activities.
But the president’s biggest critics are getting way ahead of themselves if they think any talk of impeachment is helpful. They would be making the same zealous mistake House Republicans made in the late 1990s, when they impeached Bill Clinton for lying under oath about his affair with an intern.
Trump certainly tells more than his share of falsehoods and exaggerations, but as president he has not yet lied under oath. The more pressing question is the allegation of collusion with Russia during the 2016 campaign — and until special counsel Robert Mueller releases his report on the matter, nobody knows for certain what Trump and his allies did or did not do.
Until then, at the very least, Democrats should lay off the impeachment talk. The only reason to discuss trying to remove Trump from office is to use the topic intentionally, like a shiny distraction from anything of substance Democrats would like to achieve in the House.
There is a lesson from the Clinton years. House Republicans impeached him, but the Senate refused to remove him. That’s the likely outcome of any move against Trump. Such drastic action is unsupportable.
— Jack Ryan, Enterprise-Journal
