Category: New Political Party (page 1 of 2)

Chuck Schumer Reminds Us That Neither Party Deserves Our Vote

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) appeared at a rally before a Supreme Court case on abortion rights and made the following statement in the course of his remarks: ” I want to tell you Justice Kavanaugh and Justice Gorsuch: You have unleashed a whirlwind, and you will pay the price. ”

The Senate Minority Leader, the second most powerful Democrat in America right now, threatened two Supreme Court Justices if they didn’t rule the way they wanted. Schumer is not going to do anything to Justices Kavanaugh and Gorsuch, but might some unstable abortion rights zealots take this as an invitation to harass these men and their families or even do harm to them? Certainly.

That’s why Chief Justice John Roberts called Schumer on his words. Schumer responded by falsely accusing the Chief Justice of turning a blind eye to President Trump’s abuse of the judiciary. While Roberts has ignored President Trump’s suggestion that Justice Ginsburg and Justice Sotomayor recuse themselves from Trump-related cases, that’s not on the same level as telling an angry mob that Supreme Court Justices are going to pay a price. In addition, Roberts called out Trump’s abuse of judges and his attempt to define them as “Obama Judges” in denigrating their decisions. Roberts has called both sides in protecting the Independence of the Judiciary.

One day after his statements, the Senate Minority Leader did a slight walkback. He didn’t apologize to the Chief Justice whose integrity he impugned, nor to the two Justices whose safety he put at risk. He did say he shouldn’t have said that but added, ” I’m from Brooklyn. We speak in strong language.”

I wonder how much of President Trump’s statements Democrats overlook because, after all, he’s from Queens. Schumer’s statements are unacceptable. Yet, there are many #NeverTrumpers who are stuck on the political binary who insist we need to give the Democrats control of the Senate and make this man the next Majority leader because of the importance of democratic norms.

To be clear, the Republican Impeachment Trial was a disgrace, from their coordination with the White House to their refusal to hear the witnesses. Yet, we’re kidding ourselves if we believe the Democrats are the principled defenders of democratic norms and therefore deserve our votes. The Democrats are about what’s in their political interest.

If we want to vote for a party that believes in our constitution and defends constitutional norms faithfully, we’re going to have to build it ourselves. Voting for either a Republican or a Democratic challenger is replacing unfaithful politicians with unfaithful politicians.

No, We’re Not All Democrats

In reaction to the Senate’s decision to not call witnesses in President Trump’s Impeachment trial, Bill Kristol made the following declaration on Twitter:

 

To start with, 51 of the 53 Senate Republicans voted not to call witnesses or subpoena other evidence despite polls showing strong support. One showed 75 percent support and polling on the issue ranged from mid-60s to the high-70s.

Its rare for politicians to defy that large a percentage of the American electorate. However, a clue as to why the GOP did surrounds John Bolton, President Trump’s National Security Adviser. Mr. Bolton refused to testify without a subpeona during the House Impeachment process, but volunteered to appear before the Senate if called.

Leaks of Mr. Bolton’s forthcoming book indicated the President pressured Bolton to join in his effort to pressure Ukraine to announce an investigation into former Vice-President Joe Biden’s son Beau and was further concerned about the President doing favors for autocratic regimes. As reported, Bolton’s testimony would have led lots of people to ask lots of questions for the entire Trump Administration, including one of Trump’s lawyers, who was alleged to be present during a meeting on Ukraine with Bolton.

The Senate short circuited all those uncomfortable questions by barring witnesses. As President Trump’s former Chief of Staff John Kelly said, without witnesses, the trial was a job “only half done.” The Senate took a “see no evil” approach, saying the whole matter should be up to voters, despite the pesky Constitution giving them the power to try an Impeachment.

The White House is making spurious claims the book contains classified information. Even if that charge proves to be inaccurate, it will probably take until after the election to litigate. Thus the Senate has succeeded in assuring the truth of what Bolton and other witnesses know will not become known to the American people. The Senate chose to cover up what they should be investigating.

So does that mean we all need to be “Democrats” and support the Democratic Party this Fall? I think not.

Let’s leave aside all the issues which conservatives disagree with the Democrats on, the Democrats’ lack of effort to win our votes and the fact that the Democratic Party helped build this culture of corruption in Washington. The Democrats’ handling of Impeachment has been far from exemplary, though the President did deserve the impeachment.

The House Democrats were determined to vote on Impeachment by Christmas. As such, they didn’t go to court to fight for these documents or for the testimony of Mr. Bolton and other witnesses who had refused to cooperate without a subpoena.

It would have taken months to go through this process through the courts and it would’ve made it more difficult for the Trump-district Congressmen to vote for impeachment as the election drew closer.

However, they should have done it anyway. If you’re going to prosecute an impeachment trial, particularly before a Senate controlled by the other party, you want every “i” dotted and every “t” crossed. You want to know what John Bolton and other witnesses are going to say. You want to know what the documents the White House is withholding say.

Instead, they made the politically easiest decision for their members and left it to the Senate to find out a lot of key information and the Senate refused. Turning away from strong indications of presidential malfeasance is wrong, but so is rushing the Impeachment case to satisfy your base even if it you didn’t investigate the case properly.

Both parties played politics rather than do their job. Neither are worth our support. What America really needs is to replace both of its major parties with new ones that will do the right thing.

The Home Alone 2 Controversy: An Epitome of our Ridiculous Politics

In 1992, Donald Trump appeared in the beloved Holiday film Home Alone 2: Lost in New York for all of seven seconds. The punchline of the future president’s cameo was, “Look, it’s Donald Trump.”

Some eagle-eyed Trump supporters noted with much anger that this scene was cut from the CBC’s annual airing of the film. The anger filtered over to Fox and Friends and over to the White House. The President accused Prime Minister Justin Trudeau of doing it as payback for Trump forcing Canada’s hand on trade and NATO.

The reality was Trudeau had nothing to do with the decision, nor was the decision made in regards to Trump’s presidency. According to the CBC, the scene was cut along with a lot of other short scenes back in 2014 to make the film fit into its allotted TV time slot, and CNN found complaints about the cut put online going back to 2015. In other words, the CBC is doing what TV stations due when wanting to air movies.

This is emblematic of the way and Trump and his followers approach politics, with fights over any perceived slight to the President. Many of the President’s supporters say this presidency is about the forgotten man. That’s only true if Donald Trump is the forgotten man.

Meanwhile, we’re running a Trillion Dollar deficit in good economic times, and the national debt has gone over $23 trillion.  The reality of Social Security and Medicare’s insolvency will lead to either a massive tax increase for workers or a cut to benefits to seniors within the next fifteen to twenty years. North Korea is threatening offensive measures as Trump’s embarrassing kissing up to North Korea has failed.

 And, thanks to Trump supporters, we’re talking about a seven-second cameo? We need serious leadership. What the Republicans have provided instead is a bread and circuses cult of personality. The Democrats have been no better with their pettiness and efforts to pander to every progressive fringe group. America desperately needs new political leadership that will deal with the nation’s serious issues.

Memo To Conservative Pundits: The U.K. is not the U.S.

There’s been a lot of ink spilled by conservative pundits about the meaning of the U.K. elections. Many conservative pundits have massively overstated their case and treated Conservative Party Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s victory as a precursor to what will happen with President Trump’s re-election campaign.

First, there is no established link between the two major parties in the U.S. and the two major parties in Great Britain. Margaret Thatcher’s 1979 election was providentially followed by Ronald Reagan’s 1980 win as two twin lions of anti-Communist resolve came to power and formed a close partnership. However, more often, the countries have each gone their own way. In 1992, John Major led the Conservatives to their fourth straight election victory while George H.W. Bush lost that year. In 1997, Tony Blair and his Labour Party came to power in the U.K. and Labour continued to control Great Britain while George W. Bush won two terms in the U.S. In 2010, David Cameron came to power for the Conservatives in a coalition with the Liberal Democrats, but that had no impact on President Obama’s re-election two years later.

Second, the U.K. has a very different political system. The U.K. is a parliamentary democracy, it’s made up of four nations (England, Scotland, Northern Ireland, and Wales), and has spawned multiple regional/nationalist parties. The structure of the parties is different. Prior to the election, Johnson kicked twenty-one uncooperative MPs out of the party and forbid them from running for Parliament on the Conservative line. That’s power the President or U.S. Congressional leaders could only dream about.

Finally, the most important thing that makes the U.K. election unique is Brexit. In 2016, voters went to the polls in a national referendum and opted to leave the European Union. After the election, the pro-Remain members of parliament have undermined the Brexit efforts at every turn, either through outright opposition or through being passive-aggressive and preventing Brexit from actually occurring. Johnson ran on finishing the job and was rewarded with a huge majority.

There’s no issue in the U.S. that’s anything like Brexit. Impeachment or “the wall” doesn’t compare to defying the will of voters regarding their country’s independence in a national referendum. The odious efforts to force a second referendum reeked of politicians who were determined to keep holding new elections until they got the outcome they wanted.

There are lessons to be learned from the U.K. election, and I’ll discuss them in a future post, but the election results has been twisted by many into some prophetic bellwether for 2020 when it’s simply not.

How to Talk to Your Family About the Need for a New Political Party this Thanksgiving

Just Don’t

Many left wingers are eager to use Thanksgiving to give their Trump-supporting/right-leaning relatives a smackdown lesson in politics as they see it. One Thanksgiving host I know of has set the wifi password to IMPEACH45 as to require their Trump-supporting relatives to type the words if they want on wifi. I would argue that this and other holiday political hi-jinks is a bad idea and ultimately counterproductive.

There are three big reasons why arguing politics at Thanksgiving is generally not a good idea. I say generally because there I have heard of families full of people who love nothing more than to have a good-natured argument, and are able to do so with good humor and without rancor. If you’re from a family such as this, than feel free to ignore this.

First of all, from a purely personal perspective, the Holidays are a special time when you actually get to spend time with people, many of whom have limited life time remaing and enjoy a feast together.If this Thanksgiving turns out to be the last time you see a grandfather or a beloved aunt, would you really want to remember that you browbeat them about their political preferences?

Secondly, our inability to have a peaceful Holiday meal without getting into an argument about politics is a part of a much larger problem. Politics has become too big and too important. Spaces and days free of political angst are shrinking. It’s poisonous to our national life and when you start an argument about politics at Thanksgiving, you’re becoming part of the problem.

Third, it’s really a question of “time and a place.” I have yet to hear of any minds being changed by a belligerent Thanksgiving argument. You’re far more likely to annoy rather than persuade as the fact you’re starting an argument and “ruining” the family time together we’ll obliterate the value of your message.

Sometimes, we find ourselves in the midst of arguments we didn’t start. Arguments are started by others and we have to choose how to respond. In doing so, remember to be respectful and to work maintain the relationship. Carly Fiorina had some interesting thoughts on handling political disagreements in her latest podcast, encouraging the use of “open-ended genuinely curious and caring questions” which is probably more effective than most other approaches to political disagreements.

We face many serious problems. However, the best thing we can do for our country’s future tomorrow is to come together to celebrate Thanksgiving in a spirit of goodwill and do our best to be agents of peace and unity.]

Happy Thanksgiving.

Pro-Life Democrats are Among the Politically Homeless

Most of my blog posts have addressed ex-Republicans like myself, yet we received a reminder last week that pro-life Democrats are also among the politically homeless. CNN reported last week:

The group for state Democratic attorneys general issued a warning to potential candidates on Monday — back abortion rights, or we won’t back you.

The Democratic Attorneys General Association announced that it would only endorse candidates who support abortion access and publicly vow to defend reproductive rights, a requirement the group called “first-of-its-kind for any Democratic campaign committee.”

cnn

Coming two days after pro-life Democrat John Bel Edwards was re-elected as the only Democratic governor in the deep South, it shows Democrats are out-of-touch regarding what it takes to win in many areas of the country.

More than that, it shows the Democrats’ decreasing lack of tolerance for pro-life viewpoints. The Democrats have long been the home for strident pro-abortion activism. It’s been pretty well-established if you want to become a national figure in the Democratic Party, you’d best dump pro-life views. In the 1970s-1990s, politicians like Bill Clinton, Al Gore, and Jesse Jackson abandoned pro-life positions for national political ambitions. This century, Representative Tim Ryan (D-OH) and Senator Tim Kaine (D-VA) did the same thing. However, there was a time where you could be a pro-life Democrat. There were pro-life Democrats like Rep. Tony Hall (D-OH) and Richard Stallings (D-ID) and Senator Howell Heflin (D-AL.) In the House, there was a Congressional pro-life caucus with dozens of Democrats and a Democratic Co-Chair. Believe it or not, the National Right to Life Committee used to get to elect their own Democratic Convention superdelegates.

Now pro-life Democrats are on the verge of extinction. Pro-abortion groups like Emily’s List are trying to eradicate the few that remain like Rep. Dan Lipinski (D-IL) In addition in 2017, Democratic National Committee Chairman Tom Perez has declared every Democrat must support abortion rights.

While Democrats for Life struggles on, their battle for the soul of the Democratic Party has been lost and Democrats who refuse to bow the knee on abortion risk losing their positions. Pro-life voters who vote for Democrats are voting for a party that not only disagrees with them but is hostile to their beliefs. However, most are not going to find a home in today’s Trumpified GOP.

Could Democrats who oppose abortion find common cause with ex-Republicans who reject the increasingly anti-immigrant, pro-war crimes stances of today’s GOP? I believe many very well could. It’s important that a new party doesn’t draw all of its members from one party, but from both major parties, as well as members of minor parties and those who belong to no party at all.

Breaking the Binary, Part Four: Focusing on Generations Not Elections

In the third part of this series, I explained, in a presidential election, even someone as far left as Elizabeth Warren is unlikely to bring about the apocalyptic consequences many warn about. Does that mean I take a “Be happy, don’t worry” approach to politics? Certainly not.

Perhaps my view could be best explained by Ronald Reagan’s quote, “Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn’t pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same.” Notice that Reagan said “one generation” and not “one election.” That sets him apart from modern Republicans.

There is cause to be concerned that freedom is in jeopardy:

  • A crushing national debt that hit $23 trillion.
  • Out of control growth in entitlements that threatens to bankrupt a future generation.
  • A lack of tolerance for differing viewpoints that endangers the First Amendment rights to freedom of religion and speech.
  • Growing racial and ethnic polarization.

These are huge issues that have to be addressed. The problem is most political leaders in the GOP and thought leaders on the right say we are one election away from losing our liberty should the Democrats win any given election. Therefore, they make decisions that alienate future generations from the Republicans in order to succeed in capturing enough votes from white baby boomers to win elections. They also tolerate policy decisions that are bad for the long term for short-term political gain.

The Democrats are going to win an election. All that Republicans and Trumpist apologists are doing right now is making the core ideas of conservatism (such as free markets, limited government, the right to life) unpalatable because they’re mixing it with tolerance for racism, conspiracy theories, and a willingness to enable abuse for “our side.”

We need to challenge unsustainable and unwise progressive policies with bold, common sense approaches that preserve liberty and protect America’s sacred values. We need to not be content to win an election by a few thousand votes in three states and call it a landslide, but rather to build an enduring political movement that will address our country’s real problems.

You’ll never get this from the Republicans. That’s why it’s time for those who are tired of politics being driven by those who want us fearful and angry all the time to start a new political party.

Libertarians Are Willing to Settle for Delicious Tears

Governor Matt Bevin (R-KY) appears to have lost his re-election bid. As with everything in our politics these days, Bevin’s loss has led to a debate about Donald Trump and his responsibility for the loss because everything leads to a debate about Trump.

The Kentucky GOP swept the rest of the statewide races and won a supermajority in the state legislature, so there’s not a great case for blaming Trump. There are much better examples of Trump dragging the GOP to defeat last Tuesday: the Virginia state legislative elections and elections in the Philadelphia suburbs. But Matt Bevin did not have a Donald Trump problem, he had a Matt Bevin problem.

However, Republicans don’t blame Trump or Bevin’s loss. They are blaming the Libertarians. The margin between State Attorney General Andy Beshear and Bevin accounted for .4% of the vote, Libertarian John Hicks received 2% of the vote. Kentucky State Senate President Robert Stivers told USA Today that most of the votes that went to Hicks would have gone to Bevin in a two-man race.

For their part, the Libertarians are happy to take the blame:

“We are always happy to split the vote in a way that causes delicious tears. Tonight there are plenty of delicious tears from Bevin supporters,” the party said in a Facebook post.

The party also claims Bevin’s decision to not have Lt. Governor Jenean Hampton as his running mate for reelection played a role in Bevin’s results along with many political positions that go against what many libertarians believe in. The statement concluded with a final parting shot for Bevin supporters.

“For the Bevin supporters, your tears are delicious.”

WKYT.COM

When I talk about the need for a new party for Conservatives, many right-leaning Libertarians point out the Libertarian Party. In We Can Do Better, America, I reject the Libertarians as a viable alternative and this post from the Kentucky Libertarians illustrates why.

They’re far too used to losing. A good 98% of the state voted for somebody else and they’re happy because they made other people unhappy. That’s not how you change the country or build a successful political party, that’s just being mean-spirited. In addition, it’s reinforcing the idea that voting for anyone other than the GOP and Democrats is splitting the vote.

Without the Libertarian on the ballot, would Bevin have won? It’s hard to say. If you’re a Republican like Stivers, you just add Hicks’ 2 percent to Bevin’s 48.8% and voila, instant victory. However, the reality is often far more complicated. It’s a popular Republican myth that Ross Perot’s independent candidacy cost George H.W. Bush his re-election in 1992 but, as I’ve written before, actual polling shows this isn’t the case and some suggest Perot took more votes from Clinton. Similarly, studies have shown that George W. Bush would have Florida by a wider margin in 2000 without Ralph Nader on the ballot, contrary to conventional wisdom.

As a general rule, a 1/3 of people who vote for Third-Party candidates wouldn’t have voted otherwise. So that would leave 1 1/3% of Kentucky Voters up for grabs. Generally, the remainder would have voted about 2:1 for one of the major candidates. This would leave a margin of 6,352 votes which is more than the difference between Beshear and Bevin. However, we have no idea which way the 28,000 Kentuckians who voted Libertarian would have gone. Were they primarily right wing voters or anti-Bevin voters?  Despite their pretense, the Kentucky Libertarian Party doesn’t know either. A party that is happy with 2% of the vote doesn’t have the capability of doing a political deep dive to find out how their voters would have voted otherwise. Mean Facebook posts are the limit of what the Kentucky Libertarians can produce.

If we wanted to find out who the second choice of Libertarian voters were and to avoid “splitting the vote” elections, there’s a simple solution. It’s called ranked choice (or instant runoff) voting. Had this system been in place in Kentucky, voters would have cast their vote for Governor by order of preference. If no one got a majority, votes for the last place candidate would instantly be redistributed to those voters’ second choice.

 If I were (for example) the President of the State Senate in a state where my party held a Supermajority and I was convinced that a third party effort had cost my party the Governorship, I’d definitely want to introduce a bill to put such a system in place. Under a ranked choice system, major party leaders wouldn’t have to worry that a third party effort would “split the vote” and cause the other major party to win.

Why won’t Senator Stivers bring forth such a bill? A ranked choice voting system takes away the stigma of voting third party. You’re not going to split the vote. You can vote for the candidate you actually want (and if you’re so inclined) you can order your vote so it automatically goes to the major party candidate you’d prefer. It increases the risk that citizens fed up with the Republicans and Democrats will come together to start a new political party that won’t be satisfied losing every major election it enters for 42 years if it gets a few tears from the major parties. In essence, it will encourage competition and Senator Stivers and Kentucky Republicans can’t have that.

Instead Stivers will use John Hicks’ candidacy as yet another argument against people voting third party and risking splitting the vote. As a bonus, Stivers and other Republicans may also use this argument over how Libertarians would have voted to overturn the result of the close election in the legislature, a prospect that should leave us all in tears.

Breaking the Binary, Part Three: Thinking Realistically About the Consequences of Elections

Continuing from our series on Breaking the Political Binary, if we want to stop finding ourselves forced to choose between horrible candidates, we need to think realistically about the consequences of the worst candidate losing.

Presidential candidates release plans to impress the constituents they need to win their party’s nomination. Senator Elizabeth Warren, by many accounts, is the Democratic Frontrunner and she is a master of plans, really bad plans. If she’s the nominee, you can expect a pitch to Republican voters to include listing all those horrible plans and imagining that they’ll all happen if Senator Warren wins. But will they?

The answer is almost certainly not. Presidents can only get so much done and for a President to really make lasting changes, he or she has to get legislation passed as opposed to just taking executive action.

Let’s take Barack Obama as an example. Barack Obama had many things he wanted to do and Republicans told us that they’d all happen if he won the election in 2008:

  1. Cap and Trade legislation.
  2. “Card Check” to replace secret ballot elections for Unions, making it easier for unions to intimidate workers into joining.
  3. Amnesty for illegal immigrants.
  4. Socialized medicine.
  5. Major gun control and bans on various types of weapons.
  6. A repeal of George W. Bush’s tax cuts on Americans earning $250,000 per year.

Obama had a large majority in the House, and won 59 seats in the Senate, which became 60 when Senator Arlen Specter joined the Democratic Party. With such numbers, Obama was set to pass his entire ambitious agenda and it would be the end of our country.

Yet most of it didn’t happen. No cap and trade, no card check, no formal amnesty deal, no gun control or weapons bans. Obama did pass the Affordable Care Act, which didn’t make healthcare more affordable and has allowed the government to bully religious employers. Obama had to put off his efforts to repeal the Bush tax cuts due to a poor economy, and in the end only succeeded in repealing them for people earning more than $1 million per year.

Obama did do damage. Both of his Supreme Court picks were bad, if you care about the Constitution. Obama did a lot of governing by executive order. However, most of his “legacy” has been undone by President Trump. Many of Obama’s policies were held up for years in court and never fully implemented.

In my opinion, Obama was a bad president on policy, but he was not apocalyptic. Elizabeth Warren would also not cause an apocalypse. The same goes for the rest of the Democratic field, and there is no chance of any of them having Obama’s congressional majority in the Senate.

If we are truly one election away from losing our Republic forever, as alarmists in the GOP allege in order to get reluctant conservatives in line behind Trump, we’ve already lost our Republic.

Of course, most of these alarmists don’t believe their own rhetoric. If Glenn Beck really believed Trump losing the election would mean the end of the country as we know it, he would make plans to shutter his operations at the end of 2020 if Trump loses and go into hiding. If Trump loses in 2020, Glenn Beck, the NRA, and the rest of the alarmists will continue to draw their paychecks, sell their merchandise, and make a living off of grassroots conservatives. It’s a game. They are playing us for fools and selling snake oil.

While a Democratic win is unlikely to end the Republic, that doesn’t mean there’s no serious concerns about our country’s future. However, addressing them is beyond the scope of people whose political vision is limited to selling the idea that an apocalypse is coming every four years. We’ll talk about them in the final post of the series.

The Impeachment Process: Another Reminder Why the Major Parties are Horrible

An Impeachment inquiry is under way into the conduct of President Donald Trump. There’s a lot to be said about this, but the entire process is a reminder both parties are corrupt. My top three takeaways are:

  1. Blind Tribalists Dominate the Republicans and theDemocrats

Regardless of the facts, the House will impeach President Trump and the Senate will acquit him. In both cases, this will be due to partisan affiliation and the interests of the parties, not the interests of the American people. The number of Republican members who haven’t even bothered to read the Whistleblower report is stunning, but it stems from the fact Republicans and Democrats in Congress frequently ignore their oath to uphold the Constitution and don’t take their duty seriously. They fall into lockstep behind whatever partisan position they’re supposed to take for the good of their career.

The number of persuadable Republicans and Democrats are limited. Senator Mitt Romney (R-Utah) may vote for removal, but only because he is bulletproof in his home state of Utah and won’t face voters until 2024. The most likely Democrat to vote against conviction is Doug Jones (D-AL) who faces a tough re-election campaign next year in a state where President Trump is hugely popular.

In the impeachment trial, the facts don’t matter to either major party. Each party will stick to its own narrative no matter what the truth is.

2. Both Parties Have Led Us Down a Road of Declining Standards

During the lead-up to the impeachment trial of Bill Clinton, Senator Ted Stevens (R-Alaska) informed the lead House Manager Henry Hyde (R-Ill) that it didn’t matter if they had evidence Bill Clinton raped a woman, stood her up, and shot her, there would not be 67 votes to convict. Donald Trump boasted he could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue in New York and not lose any support. Both were sadly right.

Now many feel that impeachment and removal is inappropriate for legal and constitutional reasons. I get that idea in principle, but that’s not the only way for a party to address misconduct by a leader. Richard Nixon was forced from office when senior statesman led by Senator Barry Goldwater (R-AZ) came to him and informed him he needed to resign. Many political leaders for lower offices have been involved in scandals that haven’t merited impeachment, but have been challenged in the primary. This would be an opportunity for a leader to stand up for character and integrity of the office. Instead, the good of the party are keeping their heads low. There is no moral or political leadership, leaving Trump with three well-intentioned but hopeless challengers.

3. Both Parties are Into Self-Dealing

Hunter Biden’s chief qualification to be on the board of a Ukrainian Oil Company earning a six digit paycheck is he was the son of the Vice-President of the United States. It’s part of a disgraceful pattern of children of those in public service cashing in on their parents’ connections and in the case of the sitting Vice-President’s son, you can bet the company hoped for some advantages from this arrangement.

However, Republican attacks on Biden lack self-awareness given that President Trump’s sons continue to manage his business empire, his daughter and he are obtaining patents and intellectual property rights in other countries while they hold public office. In the read-out of the Ukrainian phone call, the Ukrainian President buttered Trump up by talking about how he stayed at a Trump hotel, which is just the latest proof that the President’s continued ownership of his properties is creating opportunities for people to use staying at Trump hotels to influence the hotels’ owner.

Add to this, the overwhelming number of grandstanding hypocrites in the Democratic Party whose motives for impeachment and removal are entirely political, and you have a picture of dysfunctional moral cesspool that the Major Parties have created.

The impeachment efforts will end one way or another, but for citizens who want honest, competent government, this should be a reminder that we ultimately need a new political party.

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