The NeverTrump campaign has sputtered to a ludicrous and pitiful end with this year. Having dragged its media lackeys and the dwindling curiosity of the country through an absurd burlesque of a “solemn, sad,” impeachment process—without alleging any actual illegalities—the NeverTrump campaign has rushed through in a procedural Star Chamber because of the “urgency” of removing the president before the country reelects him. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) will not send the articles of impeachment to the Senate until Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) promises to go to court and oblige administration witnesses to testify, a step the trained Democratic seals of the House declined to take because of the urgency of trial and removal of the president.

Finally, the revelation appears to have been noticed by the speaker, just ahead of the arrival of Santa Claus, that the Democrats have no case against the president, are slipping in the polls, and that the last stand of the argument that a moral imperative makes Trump clearly unfit to serve in the great office to which he was elected, has crumbled.

Trump grates on the nerves of many—including many supporters—but that is not an impeachable offense. The country will punish a party that puts its own rabid partisan antagonism ahead of the national interest in effective government. The Democrats have no case for impeachment so they can’t go forward. They cannot possibly imagine there is any smoking gun anywhere to unsettle this administration. And as the country enters a presidential election year, they can’t get anyone except their lickspittles in the national political media drooling again about any legal threat to this president.

The voters will exercise their right and duty to determine if they want to reelect Donald Trump. The Democrats started late, after years of huffing and puffing. They failed to impress anyone, came up empty, produced and passed a pack of lies as an argument for impeachment. Now they are trying to assert constitutional rights they do not possess and a moral authority they squandered years ago to deprive the Senate of the control over an impeachment trial which the Constitution clearly reserves to the upper chamber.

It’s over, Madam Speaker. Go back to San Francisco and ask Santa’s elves to help you clean up the public sanitation problem of the homeless people the California Democratic miracle has put on the city’s sidewalks.

I have already suggested, here and elsewhere, that the Senate refer to the Supreme Court the question of whether it is obliged to hold a trial when the House has failed to check any of the boxes the Constitution provides for removal of a president: treason, bribery, high crimes, and misdemeanors. The country will wish to know if these spurious impeachment divertissements will now become a regular irritant in the political calendar when the White House and the House of Representatives are in the hands of different parties, or whether the impeachment of a president will become again a rare, “solemn, and sad” process which will only occur when there really is fear the president has committed grievous offenses.

The Wall Street Journal on December 19 suggested that the Senate should proceed with its trial without receiving the articles from the House, frivolous and vexatious litigation though they are. I doubt if such a step would have any legal validity, but it would be in order for McConnell to give Pelosi notice that the Senate will not conduct a trial unless the articles of impeachment that have been adopted are officially delivered to the Senate by January 15.

The Democrats and their frenzied claque of media harpies foisted the Trump-Russia collusion fraud on the country, followed by a vapid, phony impeachment investigation which has produced meritless allegations of inoffensive offenses, and now they would virtually dictate a process, if not a verdict, from the Republican-controlled Senate. No, not again—not even if all the media’s junkyard dogs bark and wag their tails in unison again.

It’s showtime. Let the fools’ carnival of unfeasible candidates elevate the designated Democratic piñata for this successful if edgy president to hammer through the election campaign. And let the Democrats finally cease their howls of moral outrage against Trump and prepare their explanations for the indictments that are likely to emerge from the special counsel investigation of the illicit spying conducted against the Trump campaign and transition team, and the assorted legal and ethical lapses of the Obama Justice Department and the Clinton campaign. They have had their full share of public attention for their defamatory nonsense; they laid this rotten egg of impeachment and they can take full responsibility for the stench of it.

I cannot allow my last column of the year in the United States to end without declaring the winner of the fierce competition for the silliest and most pretentious tweet or email I have received from readers in 2019.

It goes to that most worthy and deserving champion, Joe Scarborough, co-host of the anti-Trump daily screed “Morning Joe,” for a tweet three months ago accusing me of writing a whitewash of President Trump in exchange for a presidential pardon and wishing me good luck in avoiding a felony conviction. He wins this prize going away, not only for his asinine accusation (the book spares nothing and was no Hallelujah chorus, and I doubt if the president was even aware of it).

But Joe wins because he invited me on his program in August 2011 to commend me on the book I was just publishing then on the disgraceful travesty of my prosecution, which has since completely collapsed. He claimed to have read and liked the book, A Matter of Principle. I’ll remember you as the gracious host you were, Joe, long before you pickled yourself in Trumpophobic bile.

Pleasant religious holidays and best wishes for 2020 to all readers, friends and foes.