PASS THE POPCORN!

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has unleashed the Committees of the House to conduct an "insane" impeachment inquiry.  Her problem, argues George S. Bardmesser, is that her majority depends on the support of voters in notionally contested districts who might have a dim view of the policy preferences of the party's third world constituencies.  "This is about Pelosi losing control of her caucus should she continue to resist impeachment, and Pelosi sensing a looming electoral disaster of monumental proportions should impeachment be launched outside the parameters she defines."  According to Mr Bardmesser, the hopheads are already in the saddle.

Pelosi understands perfectly that an election where the Democratic Party is framed as a single-issue party, whose sole concern is an impeaching a president over two casual sentences in a phone call, will be catastrophic. But she has run out of rope.

Impeachment proceedings are a given, because her caucus now almost unanimously demands it, and her caucus demands it because the Democratic Party has been hijacked by the Resistance crazies and the hard left. Pelosi has also run out of cute euphemisms for impeachment—the usual Pelosi mumbo-jumbo, like “inquiry,” “investigation,” and “official inquiry,” no longer work without giving the crazies the real deal.

Mr Bardmesser is clearly hoping for a fight.  Pajamas Media's Matt Margolis is also of the view that the hopheads are in the saddle, and that the House Democrats will reveal themselves as crazy.  "One Democrat senator who spoke anonymously said that Nancy Pelosi wants to keep the scope of the impeachment inquiry as 'narrow' as possible. This anonymous senator supports a broader inquiry but said that 'people are worried' about an internal political fallout."

It's well past time to worry about internal political fallout.  When the Ted Turner network gave coverage to supposedly moderate Democrats in Congress who were beginning to come around on at least an impeachment inquiry, the cheerleaders for the third world kiddie corps immediately lost all composure.  "CNN Slammed for Labeling Five Centrist Democrats as 'Leaders on Impeachment' and Erasing Efforts of Progressive Women of Color."  Priceless.

In the report CNN anchor Dana Bash said the five representatives she dubbed the "anti-squad"—Reps. Elissa Slotkin (D-Mich.), Abigail Spanberger (D-Va.), Mikie Sherrill (D-N.J.), Chrissy Houlahan (D-Penn.), and Elaine Luria (D-Va.)—engaged in "risky political business" a week ago by joining more than 100 other Democrats in calling for impeachment proceedings. Some of their Democratic colleagues had demanded impeachment more than two years ago.

Yes, although those loud voices from two-plus years ago give the impression that if their districts became Gaza or Caracas or Mogadishu it wouldn't be any big deal, and that's the mind-set at Common Dreams.

The congresswomen represent more conservative districts than some of their progressive colleagues, but critics slammed CNN for portraying their decisions to back impeachment this month as courageous while ignoring the earlier calls of Tlaib, Omar, Ocasio-Cortez, Pressley, and that of Waters, who said Trump should be impeached shortly after he took office.

"The story gives these women credit for leading impeachment when in fact they were late in the game followers," Elie Mystal, executive editor of the blog Above the Law, tweeted. "If not for the work of women of color, there would have been no impeachment movement for them to glom onto, a fact this story seems to forget."

Yes, although you're not as likely to win a swing district running on impeachment. Blaming anybody but the local ward-heeler politician for the conditions in a heavily Democrat district is de rigueur for getting re-elected in such a district.

Meanwhile, David Brooks, still nostalgic for those days of Expert Consensus, writes about anything other than his admiration for a certain Chicago politician's creased trousers.  "This political brawl will leave Trump victorious."  The people at The Federalist or Pajamas Media or Red State are generally on board with that.  Not so much if you want to get invited back to the Sunday shows.

People will conclude that Democrats are going ahead with impeachment in an election year because they don’t trust the democratic process to yield the right outcome. Democratic elites to voters: We don’t trust you. Too many of you are racists!

That's simply reinforcing prior beliefs, isn't it?

Unfortunately, Mr Brooks can only long for the restoration of the ancien regime, where the Sober Pontificators come up with what is Good For Everyone Else.

Impeachment would be an uplifting exercise if we had sober leaders who could put party affiliation aside and impartially weigh the evidence. It would be workable if Congress enjoyed broad public affection and legitimacy. We don’t live in that world. This process is already devolving into the sort of mindless partisan war that causes Americans to be disgusted with Washington. Impeachment is no longer a rare and grave crisis in American life; it’s becoming a device parties use when the House and the presidency are in the hands of different parties.

It hasn't occurred to him yet that gridlock might be desirable, and that gridlocking by impeachment is no different from gridlocking by debt ceiling or any of the other procedural devices of the past quarter century: the liberties of the people are safe from something imposed on the populace by the political class in the name of compromise and consensus.

An election defeat would mean the people don’t like Trumpism. But the impeachment process reinforces the core Trumpist deep-state message: The liberal elites screw people like us. If Trump’s most visible opponents are D.C. lawyers, Trumpism becomes permanent.

Left unstated: the deep state reserve the right to continue the investigations and the obstruction should the impeachment inquiry fail in the Senate, should Our President win re-election, even with sizeable pluralities in the several states and country-wide, even with the squishy Democrats sent packing from Congress.

Note though, that Mr Brooks's salary, as well as his continued presence on the Sunday shows, depends on him not recognizing that perhaps the best thing for the political class to do is go away.