Pierce: Republicans Are Talking 'Civil War' Because They Don't Have Any Defense for the President*

[mcar]

Republicans Are Talking 'Civil War' Because They Don't Have Any Defense for the President*
Louie Gohmert is the latest lawmaker spoiling for a fight—and not necessarily a rhetorical one.

BY CHARLES P. PIERCE
OCT 31, 2019

...I mention all of this because, by all indications, as this impeachment business rolls along, Freeman could v find work on television as the Angelo Dundee of legislative violence. The Republicans are spoiling for a fight, and not necessarily a rhetorical one. The challenge was hurled on Thursday afternoon by Rep. Louie Gohmert, Padishah Emperor of the Crazy People.

“Never in the history of this country have we had such gross unfairness that one party would put armed guards with guns to prevent the duly authorized people from being able to hear the witnesses and see them for themselves...That’s not the kind of evidence that a coup should be based on. If we’re going to have what they’re trying to legalize as a coup, we ought to have a right to see each of those witnesses. It’s about to push this country to a civil war if they were to get their wishes,” Gohmert opined. “And if there’s one thing I don’t want to see in my lifetime, I don’t want to ever have participation in, it’s a civil war. Some historian, I don’t remember who, said, guns are only involved in the last phase of a civil war.”

...

Also, one of the more amusing sidelights of the action so far is the Republican insistence on framing the Great Penis Hunt of 1998 as a model of congressional sobriety, probity, and fairness, when all of us who lived through the damn thing know that the GPH was merely the final gasp of a seven-year campaign to find something that would enable them to get rid of Bill Clinton. Whitewater. Filegate. TravelGate. Castle Grande. Hell, they had two congressional committees and two special prosecutors look into poor Vince Foster's suicide. There was that epic moment before the House Judiciary Committee when Ken Starr had to admit under oath that there was nothing to any of that stuff and that the blowjobs were the only thing they had left. (Also, because of the insistence by Brett Kavanaugh that all the steamy stuff be included in the Starr Report, we ended up knowing far more about Bill Clinton's dick than we currently know about Donald Trump and Deutsche Bank.) And that's not even to mention that Starr's office was a sieve.

And the most interesting thing to me remains the fact that, all through the process in 1998, we heard earnest speeches from the Republicans about the rule of law, and about long contemplative walks on the beach, and about looking deeply into their children's eyes, and quotes from Thomas More—or, at least, from Robert Bolt's conception of Thomas More—concerning the grave responsibility of impeaching Bill Clinton. And yet, after it failed, it fell completely down the GOP memory hole. Nobody took pride in doing their duty, or of fighting the good fight. Hardly any Republican even has mentioned it until today when, in defense of an array of transparently impeachable offenses, the GPH was cited as a model of fairness and good government. Yeah, we're all going to be stumbling our way through the fog machine for a while, sports fans.

https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/a29657291/louie-gohmert-civil-war-impeachment-trump/

[spanone]

1. You're either for foreign interference in our elections or you're not

[vlyons]

2. The last time I checked

threatening armed uprising against the government was treason.

[kairos12]

3. Civil War from a bunch of losers living in the basement of their mothers.

Bring it on!

[The Blue Flower]

4. The classic line for the Clinton impeachment was "It's the lying."

That was the line my R co-workers were using when I said it was just an f'ing blow job. We're up to around 15K lies counted by the WaPo for the criminal cretin. History will not be good to this era's Rs.

[mcar]

6. The media must not be allowed to forget

Post Trump, the Rs will try to say, "all is well now, we're back to normal."

They cannot be allowed to normalize these racist, sexist, corrupt cretins.

[roamer65]

5. What happened to that "rule of law" thing they chanted during Clinton's impeachment?

Fucking hypocrites.

[mcar]

8. They are nothing but hypocrites. nt

[Mme. Defarge]

7. The GPH of 1998!

[warmfeet]

9. Let them start it.

They are blowhards and cowards. They won't do shit. Feckless cowards, the lot of them.

[Progressive Jones]

10. Anyone trying to start an "armed civil war"

will be captured, or killed.
Those who are killed will be the lucky ones.

[gordianot]

14. Those who first respond will not care about your politics.

[crickets]

11. Great read. Charles Pierce is a treasure. nt

[gulliver]

12. One mugger doesn't really feel the need to "defend" their fellow mugger's mugging.

They just mug away. Any pretense of justification is just that, pretense. They want to mug; Trump wants to mug. The question of right or wrong has already been decided by Republicans in favor of wrong. The rest is just fig leaves so they don't see the type of person they've let themselves become. Muggers.

[AllaN01Bear]

13. unfairness? youve locked us out of allmost everything , talk about one sidedness and so on.

[Mc Mike]

15. It's so unfair to tRump, Gohmert blubbered.

TX repuglinazi bircher gohmert.