The House took a very polarizing vote today on approving the impeachment inquiry.
It passed 232-196.
There are two ways to look at this.
One, is to say it was starkly partisan along party lines.
No Republicans voted in favor.
And that would be true.
But another way to look at it is that two Democrats actually voted AGAINST.
In these times of absolute polarization along party lines, the fact that two Democrats broke rank and voted against tells you a whole lot.
And even CNN wrote about that today:
Following the 232-196 vote in the House on a resolution guiding impeachment proceedings, the White House is seizing on the two Democrats who voted against it as evidence of “bipartisan” opposition to the measure.
Two White House officials said the administration will continue to argue that it’s a ‘big deal’ two Democrats sided with Republicans in “bipartisan opposition” and that two is actually not such a small number in these partisan times.
“Two has always been a threshold with a bipartisan vote. In today’s partisan times, that’s huge,” one official said.
The White House will try to make the case that leadership wasn’t totally successful with two Democrats jumping over for a vote of this magnitude.
“Today, the opposition was bipartisan,” White House senior counselor Kellyanne Conway tweeted.
“The only bipartisan thing about this impeachment sham is the opposition to it,” the White House tweeted on its official account.
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In terms of the GOP arguments against process being undercut by the Democrats’ vote, officials say that messaging doesn’t need to change as of now because closed-door hearings are still taking place next week. The official said until the President’s team begins getting access to witnesses and is able to exercise due process rights, the White House will continue to argue the process is flawed.
One official said it remains to be seen how it will play out and that Democrats want a trial after the verdict has been reached.
White House officials said the unified Republican opposition — which came after massive pressure from Trump — stands in contrast to the two Democratic defectors.
Here's more:
From Roll Call, these were the two who voted AGAINST:
Two Democrats, Reps. Collin C. Peterson of Minnesota and Jeff Van Drew of New Jersey, voted “no.” Van Drew has said that while Trump’s behavior has been “distasteful” and makes him “feel uncomfortable,” he doesn’t believe the president has committed any impeachable offenses.
Collins notes the partisan divide:
Trending Politics had more:
On Thursday, the Democratic controlled House of Representatives voted in favor of formally beginning the impeachment inquiry against President Donald Trump by a vote of 232-196.
The move is no surprise and comes after Democratic Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi announced earlier in the week that she would hold a vote in the House to formalize an impeachment inquiry against the President.
The only good news is that House Republicans stuck together and none voted in favor of it.
“This week, we will bring a resolution to the Floor that affirms the ongoing, existing investigation that is currently being conducted by our committees as part of this impeachment inquiry,” Pelosi said in a letter on Monday.
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“This resolution establishes the procedure for hearings that are open to the American people, authorizes the disclosure of deposition transcripts, outlines procedures to transfer evidence to the Judiciary Committee as it considers potential articles of impeachment, and sets forth due process rights for the President and his Counsel,” Pelosi added.
For President Trump to be successfully impeached, not only would the House of Representatives need to eventually get 2/3 votes, but there would also need to be 67 Senators to vote in favor of impeachment and with a majority Republican Senate, this would be highly unlikely.
Republican Senator Lindsey Graham recently spoke out on the ongoing impeachment inquiry, stating that not a single Republican in the Senate would vote to impeach the President.
“You have to accept that President Trump is president,” Graham said on Tuesday during an interview with Sean Hannity of Fox News.
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More from Trending Politics:
The Democratic controlled House of Representatives voted on Thursday morning in favor of formally beginning the impeachment inquiry against President Donald Trump by a vote of 232-196.
The move is no surprise and comes after Democratic Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi announced earlier in the week that she would hold a vote in the House to formalize an impeachment inquiry against the President.
One of the most shocking revelations of the vote is how many Republicans voted in favor of the impeachment inquiry... ZERO! This revelation goes against many recent reports that suggest many Republicans in the House as well as Senate would vote against President Trump, in favor of impeachment.
“The Senate is likelier to remove Trump after impeachment than you think,” wrote a bogus Washington Post article earlier in the month. The article did however mention that “getting 20 out of 53 Republican senators to agree to boot him from office won’t be easy under any circumstances.”
For President Trump to be successfully impeached, there would need to be 67 Senators to vote in favor of impeachment and with a majority Republican Senate, this would be highly unlikely.
Republican Senator Lindsey Graham recently spoke out on the ongoing impeachment inquiry, stating that not a single Republican in the Senate would vote to impeach the President.
“You have to accept that President Trump is president,” Graham said on Tuesday during an interview with Sean Hannity of Fox News.
“That’s the problem. They don’t accept that President Trump won the election, and America hates a sore loser as much as any country on the planet. This is an unfair process being driven by sore losers and there is not one vote in the United States Senate to impeach President Trump based on this phone call because he did nothing wrong,” he added.
Graham quickly corrected himself saying that not a single vote “among Republicans” would vote for impeachment in the Senate.
On Tuesday morning Republican Rep. Jim Jordan sang a similar tune as Graham, stating that he expects Republicans to stick together against the bogus impeachment inquiry against President Donald Trump.
On Monday, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi announced that she would be holding a House vote to formally begin the impeachment inquiry. Jordan noted that this announcement by Pelosi means nothing and that he firmly believes that all House Republicans will vote against Pelosi's resolution.
“Frankly, even if they tried to change something to give a little bit of Due Process, we are all still going to vote against this because this is such a sham and been such a sham from the beginning,” Jordan said. “So, yeah, I don’t think — and you can’t undo what they have already done. We have had these eight depositions now. They have been leaking selective parts of it. Haven’t been following any type of basic Due Process. So, you can’t undo what they have done.”
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