Two unrelated — or perhaps in one respect, not so unrelated — impressions arising from the week’s events …
I suggested not long ago that I suspected that Speaker of the House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi’s goal in instituting impeachment proceedings is — through the continual drip of incriminating information about President Trump and his agents and without regard to the outcome of the inevitable Senate trial — to politically weaken the President with that small (but likely electorally decisive) segment of voters who aren’t already irrevocably committed to or against him. (This goal being in addition to the most important: that Mr. Trump’s undisputed interaction with Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy constituted an abuse of power sufficient to warrant his removal from office.) Some opine that the hearings won’t change any minds. I disagree. While the testimony of State Department Officials William Taylor and George Kent perhaps merely reinforced the pre-existing impressions of the voters following the proceedings, I thought Friday’s testimony by Marie Yovanovitch, the U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine that Mr. Trump summarily dismissed after she was shamelessly smeared by his agent, Rudy Giuliani, and whom Mr. Trump himself maligned during his July 25 phone call with Mr. Zelenskyy … was, politically, devastatingly effective. Although the President’s Republican House defenders were technically correct that Amb. Yovanovitch, having been removed months before the Presidents’ July call, had little to add to the crux of the Democrats’ central impeachment allegations (although her testimony did demonstrate a pattern of behavior by the President’s agents to pursue his interests above the nation’s), her controlled but obviously distraught (at times, you could see her eyes glisten) description of the way she was driven out of her post by bullies when she had done nothing wrong, her career irreparably changed and leaving her and her family emotionally abused – was, in my view, a damning account. Mr. Trump is already relatively weaker with women, our majority voting segment. If the Democrats can’t develop 2020 campaign ads — depicting the President’s live tweet during the hearing, “Everywhere Marie Yavonovitch went turned bad,” and Ms. Yovanovitch’s visibly distressed reaction — that will viscerally resonate with those Republican and Independent women in swing states who are already uncomfortable with Mr. Trump’s selfish bullyboy tactics, they don’t deserve to win the election. I would submit that Ms. Pelosi’s percolating Election Day brew got a notable boost in flavor this week.
Years and years ago, due to his support of legislation that would be very beneficial to my organization’s primary customers, I gave a very small personal contribution to a campaign of Republican U.S. IA Sen. Chuck Grassley. My reward for that contribution was being placed on Sen. Grassley’s contributors list. For years, I received his solicitations, which I tossed. I was finally moved to write Mr. Grassley — in an appropriate tone 😉 – taking issue with his partisanship and positions. The Senator did not thereafter cease the behavior that concerned me; he did, however, seemingly take me off his mailing list.
Until this week. Perhaps through a glitch in the Republican National Committee’s direct mail systems, I got a letter from Sen. Grassley, asking me to contribute – not to his campaign, but to that of … U.S. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky. Mr. Grassley declares how Mr. McConnell “… as Senate Majority Leader … is showing everyone that he’ll stand strongly in the face of a radical Democratic Party that is embracing socialism and is rabidly obsessed with destroying President Trump …. [Democrats will] spend millions of dollars smearing Senator McConnell with reckless, false attacks …. [U]ltra-rich leftists, radical environmentalists, anti-gun activists, pro-abortion supporters, coastal elites, and a nationwide army of angry liberals will do whatever it takes to try to defeat President Trump…. [If Mr. McConnell] is defeated in Kentucky … there [will] be another liberal in the Senate taking marching orders from Chuck Schumer …. That is why I am asking you to support Mitch McConnell’s re-election campaign. It’s important for Iowa, and for all of America, for him to continue leading Republicans in the Senate.”
I’ve never received a Democratic solicitation; I suspect that they are similarly full of inflammatory hyperbole. It did occur to me how seemingly odd it was for Sen. McConnell to be reaching all the way into the Midwest for support in a race that he should handily win in a strongly red state. It brought to mind comments I’ve heard in recent months from a close friend located much closer to the Bluegrass State than I am, who asserts that Mr. McConnell can be beaten by the Kentucky Democrats’ leading Senate candidate, Amy McGrath, a 20-year Lt. Col. Marine fighter pilot. By the looks of this solicitation, Mr. McConnell agrees with our friend. Mr. McConnell’s stout support of a President who appears to enjoy intimidating women may not serve him so well if he’s up against a 20-year celebrated female Marine …
McCoy's Noise 