There She Goes Again: Murkowski Breaks With McConnell Over Impeachment Strategy
Murkowski, Democrats forget that Senate Democrats worked with Clinton’s White House during his impeachment trial.
Alaska Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski has once again broken ranks with Senate leadership. This time it’s over the strategy for the impeachment trial against President Donald Trump.
Murkowski told KTUU that Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s comments about working with the White House during the trial “disturbed” her while criticizing how the House handled the impeachment vote:
“And in fairness, when I heard that I was disturbed,” Murkowski said before describing that there should be distance between the White House and the Senate in how the trial is conducted. “To me it means that we have to take that step back from being hand in glove with the defense, and so I heard what leader McConnell had said, I happened to think that that has further confused the process.”
Murkowski was critical of the impeachment process conducted in the House of Representatives that she describes as rushed. “Speaker Pelosi was very clear, very direct that her goal was to get this done before Christmas.”
Murkowski pointed out that if the House Democrats “truly believed that they had information that was going to be important, they subpoena them, and if they ignore the subpoena, as they did, at the direction of the White House, then that next step is to go to the courts.”
She insisted she will not make up her mind on she would vote in a full impeachment trial: “For me to prejudge and say there’s nothing there or on the other hand, he should be impeached yesterday, that’s wrong, in my view, that’s wrong.”
The GOP has 53 seats in the Senate, but McConnell’s strategy could face challenges due to moderate Republicans like Murkowski, Sen. Susan Collins, and Sen. Mitt Romney.
Murkowski and Democrats seem to forget that in 1998 the Democrats in the Senate worked with President Bill Clinton’s White House:
According to then-Washington Post reporter Peter Baker’s book, “The Breach: Inside the Impeachment and Trial of William Jefferson Clinton,” Senate Democrats coordinated with the White House on a number of impeachment-related issues behind the scenes.
According to Baker, one of those arrangements involved White House Counsel Charles Ruff arranging a “secret signal” with Democratic leadership. If Ruff wanted to rebut anything from the Republican House managers, something rules didn’t allow for, he pre-arranged with then-Senate Democratic Leader Tom Daschle’s aides for a senator to submit a question to then-Chief Justice William Rehnquist asking the White House to respond.
Aides reportedly would “fill in the name” of one of several “default senators” — such as Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., and then-Sen. Chris Dodd, D-Conn. — who had agreed to allow themselves to “be used in this way.”
The book also detailed how then-Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, spoke with Clinton and helped organize a pressure campaign in defeating Sen. Susan Collins’, R-Maine., attempt to adopt “findings of fact” by which the Senate could take a majority vote on whether Clinton lied under oath and impeded discovery of evidence even if the chamber failed to convict him. Baker described how Clinton “tracked down Harkin in the Democratic cloakroom during a break in the trial to vent his outrage” at what Collins was cooking up.
“Harkin needed no convincing,” Baker wrote. “He had immediately recognized the pernicious effects of the findings plan and set about trying to destroy it before it got too far.”
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Comments
This woman believed the Kavanaugh accusers. When you are that bereft of intellect, any thing is possible. She, no doubt, spends Senate debate time watching Ancient Aliens and thinks she has the answers.
She’s rino garbage.
We knew this a long time ago. How didn’t Alaska??
“This woman believed the Kavanaugh accusers.”
No, she didn’t. She knew it was a con game of liars and the corrupt. She is one of them and was part of it.
“Maverick” is gone to his just reward (it’s going to be a hot one–and I’ll ship an extra ton of coal to the Devil) but the Senate grandstanders live on.
Nepotism shines again! This Senator grants Democrats the ability to prescribe bipartisan poison at will.
Where are all the Dem Mavericks????
Their “mavericks” are left of Lenin.
Democrats are kept in line because 1) they fear being Stalincided, and 2) they only display courage as a herd.
“Where are all the Dem Mavericks????”
They don’t have them. They have bumper stickers about only difficult women making history and such, but they only have difficult women opposing conservatives. Conservatives being God-loving, small government, independent liberty types. Otherwise, they all fall inline. How often do the women on the Supreme Court write dissents? With the conservatives, they might all vote for a position, but then write dissents: I agree with the vote, but the reasoning should have been this…
Remember all those women dressed in white for the State of the Union address, who had to look for leadership because they didn’t know when to applaud? Democrats.
At least Tulsi has an independent streak. Which is why she will soon barely be a footnote.
Cosmetic surgery is not particularly becoming, for her. Or Pelosi. Or Schumer… John Kerry or any of the rest of them.
“one thing you can’t hide, is when you’re crippled inside”
John Lennon.
Murkowski, Collins and Romney are all McCain Democrats, they are NOT moderate Republicans. They are all Democrats who run as Republicans in order to get elected. Then, they spend more time on the Democrat side of the aisle than they do on the Republican side.
Mccain is particularly odious scum: it turns out he was very involved in the coup attempt.
Dig him up from Arlington and dump him somewhere else. Like the ocean.
She’s selective, opportunistic, Pro-Choice. A leftist hiding in conservative clothing.
Like always, she makes a lot of noise. Then leadership will find some way to buy her off and she’ll go along. This is her standard pattern. She claims she has scruples in order to raise the price for her vote.
Like McQueeg and Mittens, she’s a butt-hurt attention whore. Collins is not far behind. I get fund-raising requests from Collins, and I respond that she won’t be getting a nickel out of me unless she publicly announces she will vote against the impeachment scam should it ever get to the Senate. How’s that for quid pro quo? I don’t know what this Lisa Murcowshit has ever done for Alaska, other than her claim to fame is her dad was governor once upon a time.
She was already primaried from running for re-election as a Republican but regained her seat running independent. At this point, how much worse would it for her to be replaced by a freshman Democrat? I don’t want to see her in the Senate when RBG passes away. Better a freshman dem than a ranking rep. At least the dem would be wearing the right uniform.
What’s required to find Trump guilty? 3/4 or is that just for removal?
2/3 for removal, anything less and he finishes his first term and runs again
They are both one and the same, but as MarkS states it is 2/3 and not 3/4. The only bifurcation is the Senate can find the Impeached person guilty (and thus removed from office) and may also decide to prohibit the person from ever holding Federal office again. Or decide not to add that penalty to the removal. They didn’t prohibit Federal Judge Alcee Hastings from holding future Federal office when they removed him from the Federal Bench for bribery, so Alcee is now a Congresscritter. I guess we could say the people who elect him should know what they are getting (and they might vote for him because he stuck it to the man by taking bribes to issue lenient sentences).
And you can bet any sum of money you wish that if the Dems manage to pry loose 51 votes instead of the required 2/3, they will have a frothing screech-fit 24/7 until the end of Trump’s second term, and then some.
“He should be removed! 51 is a majority! Anything we do is justified now! We will use thousands of exclamation points until we win!”
Actually it turns out the senate can only disqualify someone from holding appointed office, not elected office. The term the constitution uses is “office […] under the united states”. This term, wherever it is used in the constitution, does not include elected office.
“And in fairness, when I heard that I was disturbed, Murkowski said…”
You were “disturbed” long before you corrupt criminal.
When I heard that she was disturbed, it wasn’t much of a surprise.
My thought exactly, she’s been mentally disturbed for decades.
The GOP has 53 seats in the Senate, but McConnell’s strategy could face challenges due to moderate Republicans like Murkowski, Sen. Susan Collins, and Sen. Mitt Romney.
No Republican is sent to Washington to be “moderate.” Republicans are in the government specifically to fight the disgusting and destructive antics of the Democrats. That’s been their job since the 1850s. Nothing’s changed since, aside from far too many R’s slacking off.
Murkowski won her seat with a plurality (not a majority) three times. I think that is probably some kind of record. At any rate she is not very popular.
She had her closest call in 2010 when she lost the Republican nomination to Tea Party-supporting Joe Miller. The GOPe threw its weight behind her instead of Miller, so she won the general election as an “independent” with about 39% of the vote. Thanks for nothing GOPe!
They let misspelled write-in votes count for her. Alaska had previously required exactly correct spelling on write-in votes, but they made an exception for Frank’s little princess.
Considering McConnell’s support for her in 2010, why do we think Murkowski is “breaking” with McConnell? It seems apparent to me that McConnell controls the Senators that, predictably, threaten to vote with the Democrats. (Collins, Murkowski, Romney). McConnell uses them to keep Trump on a tight leash – Trump signs omnibus spending bill or Senate impeachment vote not assured?
McConnell has not recessed the Senate in 3 years – in order to control all of Trump’s appointments. He is no friend of Trump.
Kind of looks like Don Imus only with a little less wild hair. Alaskans must be the leaders in abusing opiods to elect this piece of garbage.
I predict that whenever it comes down to a vote there will be exactly 2 Republican defections and exactly 2 Democrat defections. The rest vote their party.
Wonder why Sarah Palin doesn’t run.
Murkowski needs to be removed from every committee and sub-committee she’s on, immediately. Democrats wouldn’t stand for such betrayal, why should the Republicans?
And you will know what the R leadership thinks by that status.
Hint: They will do nothing. They support her.
What the hell is the matter with you Alaska voters? She does this every time the rubber hits the road and you have known it for a long time. Surely there is someone in a state that size with a brain.
If murkowski and romney were bred, they’d produce mccain.