HORIST: Nadler presided over a political circus

After almost two years of Democrats and their press gallery claiming that President Trump and his campaign folks had conspired with Russian operatives, the Report by Special Counsel Robert Mueller said “not so” – leaving the Democrat strategy of ousting the President in shambles.

Rather than admit that they were wrong and drop the entire subject, Democrats believed that their only problem was that the public did not read the Mueller Report. So, they had to find ways to re-introduce the Report to we poor ignorant souls.

In an attempt to breathe life into the moribund narrative, the newly empowered House Democrats – led by Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerry Nadler — invited Mueller to testify before the Committee even though Mueller had said he would not say anything more than what appeared in the Report.  He did not and the hearing proved to be an embarrassing disaster for Nadler & Co.

Instead of tucking tail and running, Democrats retained their belief that it was public ignorance that was preventing the public from joining the impeachment lynch mob.  Sooooo … they decided to hold oversight hearings on the same subject.  They led off that bit of showboating with Trump’s personal attorney Michael Cohen to make his bitter condemnation of his former employer and benefactor before heading to jail for lying to Congress and a number of other personal crimes – mostly unrelated to Trump or the Trump Organization.

In yet another hearing, Nadler and the Judiciary Committee invited long ago White House Counsel John Dean — of Watergate fame – to testify on God knows what.  In his opening statement, Dean admitted that he was not a “fact-based witness.”  That is another way of saying that he had nothing to offer relative to the alleged purposes of the hearing.  Dean would have been better suited as a guest on the Public Broadcasting System (PBS) to discuss the Nixon era.

In the interim, Democrat members of Congress entered Bills of Impeachment against the President.  They failed to get enough support to get to a vote.  House Speaker Nancy Pelosi did not want to see her caucus go down that political rabbit hole.  But that did not stop Nadler from a hippity hoppity jump down the hole that Pelosi was trying to avoid.

Nadler declared – without foundation or authority – that his Committee would undertake an impeachment inquiry without conducting a formal impeachment hearing.  The latter would take a majority vote of the House – and there were not nearly enough votes to pull that off.

To give it all the aura of an impeachment hearing, Nadler had his committee pass a meaningless resolution that laid out the “rules” for his impeachment inquiry —  a hearing to determine if there should be a hearing.  He sold it in television interviews as an impeachment hearing when, in fact, it was nothing more than a pretend impeachment hearing.  Even the resolution establishing the rules was pure political theater since all the same rules were in place before the resolution.

With Nadler as producer and director, the pretend impeachment hearing was launched with former Trump Campaign Chairman Corey Lewandowski as the first witness.  Lewandowski advised the Committee ahead of time that White House attorneys had exerted privilege and he was not to answer any questions regarding conversations with the President beyond what was included in the Mueller Report.  Despite this forewarning, Nadler scheduled several hours of hearings.  Within the first ten minutes, it was obvious that nothing … NOTHING … new or of importance would be learned.

If the hearing was truly about gaining information and insight, Nadler could have adjourned and returned to his office to work on some of the more serious matters of state that are pending in the Judiciary Committee.  But that would have deprived his fellow Democrats the five minutes of face time on the national networks – and the opportunity to produce fodder for future campaign commercials.

The only thing that kept the hearings from being a complete yawner was an occasional heated exchange or a bit of feisty verbal combat.  The main issue was Lewandowski’s role in taking a note from Trump to be given to then-Attorney General to speak out against the appointment of the Special Counsel.  Lewandowski was illogically accused by Democrats of being a criminal for taking the note from Trump and a “chicken shit” for not delivering it.  Conversely, when asked if Lewandowski could offer any reason for the conduct of the Democrat members of the Committee, he replied “because they hate Trump more than they love their country.”  Ouch!

The entire hearing was a political sham in which Democrats engaged in what can only be described as legislative masturbation.   It was a continuation of their unbroken string of failed attempts to sell the same old snake oil in a  new bottle.

So … while hundreds of thousands of migrants are illegally entering the country, tens of thousands of Americans are dying of opioid overdoses, gun legislation languishes, the Inspector General is investigating potential misconduct by the highest intelligence and law enforcement officials and Iran is ramping up its aggression against the civilized world, Nadler is the deer in the headlight of the #NeverTrump Resistance Movement.

The House Democrats are determined to put on more sequels than Rocky – except they are keeping the same script and changing the lead actors.  And if that is not enough, the Democrats are calling for Lewandowski to be held in contempt of Congress and Justice Brett Kavanaugh to be impeached as a sideshow.

Hear the calliope and smell the popcorn.  The circus is in town.

So, there ‘tis.