THE WALL STREET JOURNAL:
America is in a “constitutional crisis.” Trump Administration officials have “decided that they’re not going to honor their oath of office.” President Trump is “almost self-impeaching” and “is every day demonstrating more obstruction of justice.”
All of these are quotes in the last 48 hours from House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who will soon have to hire a lexicographer to come up with new ways to say that Mr. Trump is committing impeachable offenses. How many synonyms are there for “obstruction”?
Yet Mrs. Pelosi and House Democrats refuse even to begin a formal impeachment inquiry. If Mr. Trump is so disrespectful of the Constitution, and so in violation of the separation of powers, what are they waiting for? Mr. Trump still has 20 months left in his four-year term, so surely if the threat is so dire, Democrats will move urgently to fulfill their sacred vow to protect the Republic?
Unless, that is, all of this is political theater. Mrs. Pelosi’s rhetoric keeps getting more fluorescent precisely because she doesn’t want to impeach Mr. Trump. She knows most of the country opposes impeachment following the report by special counsel Robert Mueller that found no evidence of collusion with Russia by the Trump presidential campaign. But millions of Democratic voters still favor it, so Mrs. Pelosi needs to feed the beast at MSNBC.
