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House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is under pressure from some Democrats to start impeachment proceedings against President Donald Trump following the release of special counsel Robert Mueller’s report.

Advice to Democrats from a conservative

By Jon Gabriel

There are no shortcuts in politics.

Clever machinations and intricate conspiracy theories dominate the hourly news cycle, but the surest path to electoral victory is years of hard and tedious work.

Knocking on doors, registering voters, developing policies and selling them to the general public might not make the A-blocks of cable news shows, but that's how to change the slow-grinding gears of government.

Years of invisible work is boring, however, so many politicos chase after the elusive Hail Mary pass.

Talker:Trump is suing Congress ... with a weak lawsuit

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Ever since Donald Trump won the White House, many on the left — and a few disgruntled Republicans — pinned their hopes on Robert Mueller. By delving into the shambolic Trump campaign and its possible contacts with Russian agents, the special counsel would prematurely end the new administration.

After years of hype, the Mueller report was a disappointment. No photos of The Donald and Vlad canoodling in a Russian hotel room; just a few unsurprising stories of Trump acting like Trump in the Oval Office.

Nevertheless, several Democrats say impeachment is now the best move. Force a bunch of Trump associates to testify before House panels, garner a majority of representatives to impeach, and send it to the Republican-controlled Senate. Where it will die far short of the needed two-thirds vote.

Even if it did work, you'd have a President Mike Pence and an enraged bloc of Republican voters meting out their wrath at the 2020 ballot box.

Cable news and Twitter addicts might enjoy the circus, but the American people are already tuning out. CNN and MSNBC saw their ratings crumble as news of the Mueller report went public last month.

The Trump-Russia shortcut failed like so many before it.

After Barack Obama won the White House, smart Republicans found ways to defeat him in the midterms. Foolish Republicans grasped for a shortcut. His name seemed, well, foreign and his dad was Kenyan. A-ha! They decided he secretly was born in the east African nation.

A motley crew of conspiracy mongers wasted years chasing down the president’s birth certificate. If the Arpaios and Trumps had focused on changing voters' minds, perhaps Mitt Romney would be wrapping up his second term. Instead, Obama served his two terms with the approval of the American electorate.

The GOP House actually did impeach our 42nd president but couldn't get a simple majority in the GOP Senate, let alone the two-thirds vote required.

Our past four presidents each faced these Hail Mary passes. In retrospect, they look more like Lucy pulling the football from Charlie Brown.

While Mueller mania grabbed the headlines, shrewd Democrats such as House Speaker Nancy Pelosi quietly won over voters and took back the House of Representatives.

Their party would be wise to ignore the shortcuts and persuade voters to return them to the White House.

Jon Gabriel is editor in chief of Ricochet.com and a contributor to The Arizona Republic, where this column first appeared. You can follow him on Twitter:@exjon.

What others are saying

Rich Lowry, The (Charleston, South Carolina) Post and Courier: "The body that is going to make the ultimate decision of what to do about Trump’s conduct, if anything, is on the hook. It has to decide what goes too far and not far enough. ... Trump is almost certainly better prepared and temperamentally suited for thermonuclear war with a Democratic House than he was to get substantive achievements out of a Republican House. He obviously hadn’t thought through an actionable populist-conservative policy synthesis, but he has a lifetime’s experience resisting and belittling enemies and extemporizing his way from one crisis to the next."

Jennifer Rubin, The Washington Post: "By passing legislation, the House can remind voters of Trump’s conduct both inviting Russian meddling and interfering with the investigation; force Republicans to take a stand on whether the president’s actions were wrong and should be tolerated in the future; and, most important, reassert Congress’ role as a coequal branch of government. ... For now, Congress, as Pelosi recommended, should be holding hearings — the results of which may be contempt proceedings against noncooperating witnesses, grounds for censure, impeachment of individuals other than the president, and legislation to prevent Trump and future presidents from engaging in reprehensible conduct of the type Mueller uncovered."

Robert Schlesinger, NBC News: "To impeach or not to impeach? That depends in part upon (Democrats') ultimate goal. If it's removing Trump from office because he is a threat to the system, the extant avenue is next year’s presidential election. Political analysts as disparate as the House Democratic leadership and Trump’s campaign team have concluded that impeachment would be a 2020 boon for Trump: Not only would it rile up Trump’s hardcore supporters, it could activate the partisan impulses of persuadable Republicans — voters who don’t like Trump but will line up behind their team if they think the other side is engaged in political dirty tricks."

What our readers are saying

If Trump insistently continues to obstruct further investigation into the questions raised by Mueller's report, the matter needs to be pursued via impeachment — in which he will either level with the American people or be immediately removed from office for failing to participate in the process.

— Sam Osborne

Impeachment of Trump would at least put an end to his reign of terror in 2020. If our votes truly matter, almost 4 in 10 say impeach. See, America, our votes never really matter anyway.

— @PurrpleJasmin

Let's get real, voters. Trump will never be impeached. Republicans in the Senate will not allow this; they don't care what Trump has said or done. We, the voters, are the only ones who can remove this nightmare from our White House.

— Len Kivi

Democrats would be insane to impeach a legally elected president simply because he wanted to stop a drawn-out investigation of something he never did. On top of that, the Senate would never do it. Tread carefully, liberals.

— David Groner

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