Politics often make strange bedfellows, and one of the most striking examples in the Trump era has been Democrats (centrists as well as liberals and progressives) commiserating with Never Trump conservatives. The National Review, at times, can be quite critical of President Donald Trump, although not as stridently anti-Trump as The Bulwark — and the National Review’s Rich Lowry, in an op-ed for Politico, offers some friendly advice to House Democrats on ways they could make their impeachment inquiry stronger.
Lowry has a very conservative resumé: he started writing for the National Review in 1992, and none other than the late William F. Buckley appointed him editor in 1997. Lowry, now 51, freelances for other publications on the side, and the theme of his Politico op-ed is that while Democrats have done a decent job with recent impeachment hearings, their inquiry could be better.
“On the substance,” Lowry writes, “Democrats won the first two weeks of the impeachment hearings by TKO. They had the advantage that the facts are in their favor, especially considering the ground that congressional Republicans have tried to defend.”
Many right-wing media figures, from Fox News to AM talk radio to Breitbart News and Alex Jones’ Infowars, have been defending Trump vigorously and insisting that he did absolutely nothing wrong during his now-infamous July 25 phone conservation with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky — who he tried to pressure into investigating former Vice President Joe Biden and his son, Hunter Biden. Lowry, on the other hand, writes that Republican assertions in defense of Trump don’t hold up.
“At the outset,” Lowry explains, “Republicans created an impossible standard for themselves. Taking their cues from President Donald Trump, they chose to defend the idea that the Trump/Ukraine call was ‘perfect’ and that there was ‘no quid pro quo,’ when the record simply wouldn’t support it.”
But the conservative journalist goes on to say that while the testimony of impeachment witnesses such as Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman and Ambassador William Taylor has been helpful, Democrats are still falling short when it comes to testimony from “true insiders.”
“Why should Democrats be content to hear from the current batch of witnesses, people who were, mostly, out of the loop, rather than getting testimony from the true insiders?,” Lowry asserts. “If they wanted to lock down their case, this wouldn’t be a close call. They would take the time to litigate through various privilege claims and get the testimony of Trump personal attorney Rudy Giuliani, acting White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, among others.”
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, the most high-ranking Democrat in Washington, D.C., has stressed that the impeachment inquiry needs to move along at a swift pace. Pelosi obviously fears that if it drags on too long, it could be a distraction from something that must be a top priority for Democrats in 2020: the presidential election and Democrats’ request to retake the U.S. Senate.
Lowry acknowledges that Democrats have their reasons for wanting a swift impeachment inquiry, but he also asserts that “insider” witnesses are worth waiting for.
“A judge’s ruling that former White House Counsel Don McGahn must show up in compliance with a congressional subpoena related to the Mueller investigation doesn’t mean Democrats will get all the testimony they want,” Lowry writes, “but it suggests that waiting for the courts wouldn’t be pointless, either. Democrats are reluctant to do this for a simple reason: they want to get the articles of impeachment out of the House in time to avoid running into their own presidential nominating process, which would be politically awkward.”
Not one president in U.S. history has actually been removed from office via the impeachment process. President Andrew Johnson in the 19th Century and President Bill Clinton in the late 1990s were impeached in the House but acquitted in Senate trials, and President Richard Nixon resigned in August 1974 before a Senate trial could come about. And Lowry wraps up his op-ed by stressing that Democrats are facing a “very high bar” with impeachment.
“If Democrats were only trying to get to the bottom of the Ukraine controversy and exact a political price in the form of exposure and damaging revelations, they would have a slam dunk,” Lowry emphasizes. “Instead, they are trying to build a case for impeachment and removal — a very high bar requiring a national consensus to succeed — atop an episode that, at the end of the day, didn’t keep defense funding from Ukraine or result in any investigations or even statements about investigations.”
