Quote:
Originally Posted by ThurgreedMarshall
|
Meadows was there to make a mess of the hearing. To slow things down, cause parliamentary procedure disputes, etc. And if lucky, maybe defend Trump substantively, if such an occasion arose.
That article gives Meadows the benefit of assuming he's genuinely aggrieved. I didn't see his face, but when I heard him engage Tlaib on that point, my first thought was, "smart way to eat up the clock."
The author of the article notes that Meadows only flipped out about race issues, and not fraud allegations. Uh, yeah? Because no Trump defender in his right mind wants to extend testimony on that stuff. OTOH, there's little to almost nor risk in starting a lengthy battle about whether someone just called you a racist.
This is why I liked AOC's questioning so much. She didn't give any opening to Trump defenders. She covered more ground in 2 minutes than anybody else the whole day. And she got off stage quickly after drawing blood.
If I'm a GOP strategist at this moment, I might consider telling candidates to actively seek to get into debates about racism and inequality. The GOP has no policy points (nor do the Democrats really, but that's another issue), but if it can engage Progressives in arguments about #metoo, inequality, or racism, it can avoid having someone like AOC ask really tight questions that expose its lack of useful policies the way she exposed bank and insurance fraud while Meadows, Tlaib, Pressley, and Cohen pondered what exactly constitutes racism.
Doing what AOC did can win elections. It can get Trump not only impeached but indicted. Doing what the rest of that panel did, and what a lot of Democrats did in or around the Kavanaugh hearings, can grab defeat from the jaws of victory for the party in 2020.
