Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) isn't right often, but she was about this: moving forward with impeachment does put her party "in a new direction." To where, no one knows. But this we do know: Democrats have chosen their path -- and inevitably, someone will pay for it. The odds that that "someone" will be Donald Trump, however, look more improbable by the day.
Forty-eight hours into this short-sighted mission, Democrats have to be sweating bullets. Not only did the president release the transcript (which even liberals like Tulsi Gabbard, D-Hawaii, called uncompelling), but even her own caucus is starting to think Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) made a fatal mistake. "When you impeach somebody, it has to be for a really strong reason," Rep. Jeff Van Drew (D-N.J.) insisted. This, he went on, doesn't do anything but "disenfranchis[e]" voters, who, he argues, are the ones who should be doing the impeaching in the first place -- at the ballot box.
And Democrats weren't the only exasperated ones. Republicans wasted no time pointing out that Pelosi was the first House speaker in the history of the country to launch an impeachment investigation without first holding a vote in the House. To Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), that's one of the most revealing aspects of this whole story -- the unilateral way liberals are pursuing impeachment. "Now, she is the speaker of the House," McCarthy told me on "Washington Watch," "but she's not the voice of America -- the voice of the constituents across this country. They lend their power [and their voice] to their representative for every two years. She just took that all away. There should be a vote on the floor." But putting her members on the record would mean voters could hold them accountable. And that's the last thing Pelosi wants.
"There are so many problems out there that we could be solving," McCarthy lamented. "But the Democrats are focused on one thing -- their hatred of the president." If the Left is wondering how their obsession is playing in mainstream America, the National Republican Congressional Committee has a clue. Tuesday, the group tweeted their thanks to Speaker Pelosi "and de facto Speaker AOC" after a 608 percent spike in online fundraising. If Democrats weren't worried about their political vulnerability before, they have reason to be.
The Ukrainian call may not be an open and closed case, but as far as Leader McCarthy is concerned, "...[N]othing in that transcript is impeachable." But, he warns, the Democrats "don't care about the facts." And either way, those facts are being lost in the noise of a relentless media, desperate to drive their anti-Trump agenda. They're throwing everything at the wall, hoping something -- anything -- will stick. Why? Because they'll do anything to distract the country from all the good this president has done. "We've made some fantastic deals..." Trump said. "We have the greatest economy we've ever had... and that doesn't get covered because you [the media] waste your time on nonsense. It's very sad what Democrats are doing to this country -- they're dividing, they're demeaning."
The hope is simple: that conservatives, and evangelicals in particular, will eventually be worn down by this onslaught and disengage. I don't know about you, but I'm tired of the constant political noise and distraction from what really matters. But there's a reason the Left is obsessed with destroying Donald Trump -- and it's the same reason we cannot grow weary in our calling: the president's policies. This is the first president to follow through on driving a conservative agenda into the heart of the Left. For years, the best we could hope for from the GOP was a party that pushed pause on the Democrats' radicalism. Not this president. He's hitting rewind, rolling back some of the worst forms of extremism this country has ever seen. Look at what he did this week alone -- rallying other nations to fight against religious persecution and for the unborn.
Those gains are possible because committed Christians understand that this administration is not about a man, it's about a mandate. It's about saving lives and ending abortion. It's about protecting the family unit and stopping the propaganda that's hurting our children. It's about the ability to live out our faith at work -- and judges who uphold the Constitution. The spiritual battle raging against this president is not about him -- it's about what he's doing. The Left's strategy is to wear us out -- but we can't let them. There's too much at stake. Years from now, generations of young people will live to tell us: it was worth the battle to stay in the fight.
Tony Perkins's Washington Update is written with the aid of FRC senior writers.
