Idaho’s congressional delegation sings from the same Trump hymnal

The recent impeachment vote in the U.S. House offers a perfect example of just how one-sided the flow of information about key votes in Congress can look to Idahoans. In a recent front-page story, the Statesman reported both Republican House members voted against impeachment and then quoted their justifications from the gospel according to Trump.

Yet, with no Democrat or Republican member of Congress from Idaho in favor of impeaching Trump, a reporter covering the story has nowhere to go to find a countervailing quote from an elected official in Idaho who favors impeachment. With Fox News reporting on Dec. 15 that 54% of Americans think there is enough evidence to impeach Trump, Idahoans deserve to hear how those who voted to impeach justify their votes.

Since it is unlikely that we can import a member of Congress from out of state to come in and play the loyal opposition to this steady stream of Trump-ordered thinking that comes from Idaho’s congressional delegation, there is another option. We can read the remarks of those in the majority of the U.S. House as to why they voted to impeach.

Here to rebut the arguments of Congressmen Fulcher and Simpson is the Majority Leader of the U.S. House, Congressman Steny Hoyer, whose remarks on the floor of the House during the impeachment vote were acclaimed as a powerful and convincing case for the impeachment of President Trump.

They are as follows:

“What I will do is remind Americans that the House provided President Trump every opportunity to prove his innocence. Instead, he ignored Congressional subpoenas for documents and for testimony by White House officials and ordered his subordinates not to cooperate. This itself is unprecedented. When Presidents Nixon and Clinton were asked to hand over documents and allow officials to testify, ultimately both complied. Because it is the law. Such actions of the President can be taken as further evidence of his obstruction and abuse of power. It is itself impeachable conduct…

“These two articles before us concern two very profound Constitutional issues about the abuse of power in our republic. First, whether it is acceptable for the President of the United States to solicit foreign interference in our elections, undermining our national security and the integrity of our democracy. And second, whether it is permissible for the president to obstruct Congress and act as if he is above the law and immune from Constitutional oversight.”

Over the course of the next few months, Idaho’s elected officials will return home from Washington to update Idahoans on the issues facing Congress, and impeachment will be at the top of the list. Whether they are addressing a group of business officials, responding to an interview from a reporter, taking questions at a community forum or writing one of those mind-numbing letters replying to a constituent’s concerns, we can expect roughly the same result.

Idaho’s members of Congress will all turn to the same page of the Trump hymnal in explaining why the President should not be impeached.

In doing so, incumbent public officials have a significant advantage over those sitting in an audience, reading their newspaper or watching TV trying to get both sides of the impeachment argument, especially when they are all from the same political party.

Recently, a TV commentator with no apparent journalistic training on how to question a public official was dazzled by a member of Idaho’s congressional delegation with a typical partisan explanation of an issue facing Congress. The TV commentator had no clue or interest in returning the partisan volley lobbed at his station’s viewers by asking a follow-up question.

Of course, citizens can go to cable TV and pick their political preference for news and analysis, but many rely just on local news to follow national issues such as impeachment and to read their elected representatives explain why they voted for impeachment.

Reporters trained in journalism do their best by asking questions that attempt to inject some objectivity into the official renditions elected officials deliver to the media and their constituencies. But there is a limit as to how far a reporter can go in questioning an elected official about his front-page statement on impeachment without appearing as a partisan instead of an objective journalist. After all, the front-page is news, not analysis, and with no statement from a public official favoring impeachment, readers get only one side of the issue.

In fact, when reporters ask the tough questions in efforts to lay bare the entire story, they are sometimes accused of bias in reporting. Earlier this year, Senator Risch actually scolded a reporter for asking a question about an issue that did not relate perfectly to the event the Senator was attending. There can be no better example of how constrained reporters can be in asking those follow-up questions that attempt to get at both sides of the story.

So for now, read these words of Steny Hoyer and let them serve as equal time for Idahoans as to why a public official would vote for impeaching President Donald Trump. And if the words of a Democrat congressional leader don’t do it for you, consider the National Review, the leading magazine of conservative thought, and Christianity Today, the evangelical magazine founded by the late Billy Graham. Both recently called for Trump’s removal from office.

We will need these reinforcements as Idaho’s congressional delegation returns home singing from the same Trump hymnal and expecting all Idahoans to join the chorus. Not!