Two 'common-sense Democrats' face party's wrath

FPI / November 4, 2019

Rep. Collin Peterson of Minnesota and Rep. Jeff Van Drew of New Jersey represent “a dying breed of common-sense Democrats,” a columnist noted.

Last week, Peterson and Van Drew, joining all Republicans, were the only Democrats to vote against House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Rep. Adam Schiff’s resolution laying out the rules for the impeachment process against President Donald Trump.

“Dub them The Last Of The Sensible Democrats,” Washington Times columnist Cheryl K. Chumley wrote on Nov. 2. “And in a field filled with leftist loony losers, that’s no small title.”

Peterson, who has represented Minnesota for 15 terms, said: “This impeachment process continues to be hopelessly partisan. … I have some serious concerns with the way the closed-door depositions were run and am skeptical that we will have a process that is open, transparent and fair.”

Van Drew, in his first term representing New Jersey, said, citing Peterson: “Collin would always kid. He said, ‘It’s just going to be you and me,’ and I said, ‘No, it might be more people.’ But it was just him and me. He’s been around a long time. He knows what’s going on.”

Elizabeth McLaughlin, CEO of the leftist Gaia Project for Women’s Leadership, tweeted: “Rep. Peterson of Minnesota and Rep. Van Drew of New Jersey are the two Dems who voted against impeachment. Vote them out in 2020.”

Chumley noted: “That’s how the Democratic Party now rolls. Vote in lockstep — or prepare to be steamrolled.”

Democrats, Chumley wrote, “care little for looking down the road or for concerning themselves with the cares of the country — for considering the long-term ramifications of their actions. They’re in it to win it, and the bloodier the better. Even if it means bludgeoning their own.”

Peterson and Van Drew, Chumley wrote, are “the last gasps of what used to be a party that portrayed itself, however falsely, as — in the words of its latest, greatest White House commander-in-chief, Barack Obama — the keeper of the transparency key, the bastion of ‘openness,’ the standard-bearer of ‘rule of law.’ ”

With a vote of 232-196, Democrats, with the exception of Peterson and Van Drew, “abandoned all pretense of those ‘rule of law’ lines,” Chumley wrote. “It’s impeach at all costs. Impeach by hook or by crook. Impeach by gosh, by God, by heck or high water, with, without or whatever may be on facts and crimes and misdemeanors and offenses.”

Free Press International