The impeachment proceedings are finally over.  What a waste of time and taxpayer money! 

President Trump should not have been impeached.  Impeachment is meant to remove someone from office when they have done something really egregious.   But here it was attempted to weaken a sitting president because the DNC are sore losers.  They started trying to remove Trump from office as soon as the results were in on election night. 

When the whistleblower complaint about the Ukraine call came about it sat on desks of influential  Democrats because it was obvious that there wasn't enough there.  But since there was nothing better going on and with the 2020 election getting closer and President Trump being so unlike a politician and actually fulfilling so many of his promises they had to do something.  The Ukraine thing would be messy enough that it would excite the Democratic base.

The base got a little too excited and having let the cat out of the bag and started down the path the House leadership had to double down on a doomed case.   They must have also been thinking that President Trump is so loud and obnoxious that if it were drawn out long enough he was bound to do something that really would be impeachable.  There were fleeting glimmers of hope. 

What they failed to realize is that while President Trump is a novice politician he is a seasoned defendant.  Of course impeachment is a political process and not a legal one but it has the form and function of a legal proceeding and his experience served him well.  As did his team.

Vice President Mike Pence wrote an opinion piece for the Wall Street Journal on 1/16/20.  His piece was right on the money.  Everyone should read it.  https://www.wsj.com/articles/a-partisan-impeachment-a-profile-in-courage-11579220188.

The interesting thing to me is the response to Senator Mitt Romney breaking with his party and voting for impeachment on the one count of abuse of power.  In Romney's opinion the case was proved that President Trump had used his position of power for purely personal reasons and not for the good of the country.  I may not agree with his assessment but I applaud his courage and I agree with his sentiment. 

The Democrats are trying to bring mob rule but in many ways President Trump has brought a mob mentality into the executive branch. 

Shortly after the impeachment vote was over, a Utah State Representative announced that he filed a resolution to censure Romney.  I heard this representative say this was being done as "damage control".  He was tripping all over his words but it certainly sounded to me that he was worried about retribution from the President.  Rather than censure Romney they are now working on a resolution of praise to President Trump.  Talk about brown nosing!

There are some pretty hurtful things being said or memed about Senator Romney.  What President Trump did was within the law but it may not have been morally right.  Senator Romney is not a traitor to the party his act was one of conscious.  The outcome of the proceedings were certain but by adding one Republican vote, Senator Romney served notice that might does not always make right.  This impeachment was purely political and but one vote was moral.

In Pence's piece he said "Ross won Kennedy’s esteem by defying his own party’s effort to oust a sitting president."    Romney has won my esteem by defying his own party's effort to turn a sitting president into a don.