By all accounts, including their own, the Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee on Wednesday are going to engage a strategy of pure Stupid, no chaser. On Wednesday, the committee will hear from a series of constitutional experts in what I believe is the vain hope of convincing our slugabed republic that the president* is worthy of being turfed out back to his Florida redoubt. What could be a very valuable civics lesson for the country is going to be conducted with a claque of Republicans determined to turn the whole exercise into a monkeyhouse.

Consider that the Republicans on the HJC include Jim Jordan, Matt Gaetz, and Louie Gohmert. The ranking Republican, Chris Collins of Georgia, no shrinking violet his own self, plans to torture Roberts’s Rules in several horrible ways to gum up the proceedings, thereby giving his more lunatic colleagues more time to screech and fling poo. And, if this account from The New York Times is to be believed, the committee warfare well may be sadly asymmetrical.



Democrats, led by Mr. Nadler, intend to try to rein in their more fiery progressives and infuse the proceedings with gravitas, mindful of their role in history. But the freewheeling nature of the panel, with its hyperpartisan members, does not easily lend itself to that task. And their handling of the report by Robert S. Mueller III, the special counsel who investigated Russia’s interference in the 2016 election and the Trump campaign, earned Mr. Nadler and his committee a reputation for being unable to fully control their own proceedings.

Republicans instead want to mire Democrats in a sloppy fight, making the hearings into such a confusing mishmash of competing information that even Republicans troubled by Mr. Trump’s actions see no upside in breaking with him. They plan to take advantage of early impeachment advocacy by Mr. Nadler and Democrats on the panel to portray the Ukraine matter as simply another attempt by Mr. Trump’s critics to take him down.



“Any article to come out of this? There is no world in which a Republican, especially on the Judiciary Committee, will accept this,” Representative Doug Collins of Georgia, the panel’s top Republican, said in an interview. “We have seen this sideshow up close all year.”

Joining Mr. Collins on Republicans’ side of the dais are some of the most ardent culture warriors and defenders of Mr. Trump: Louie Gohmert of Texas, Matt Gaetz of Florida, Andy Biggs of Arizona and Jim Jordan of Ohio, who led the president’s defense in the Intelligence Committee. They have already shown a flair for the dramatic, organizing conservative lawmakers to storm the Intelligence Committee’s secure chambers in a stunt to stall the proceedings, which they called a “kangaroo court.”



So Nadler is going to try and restrain his more enthusiastic colleagues while Collins frees up his pack of crazoids to let their freak flags fly. Gravitas, because that’s worked so well in a country that elected a vulgar talking yam to its highest office. I am already dreading this.



Jerry Nadler appears to have misjudged the battlefield. Tom Williams Getty Images

Meanwhile, back at the House Intelligence Committee, in an attempt to pre-empt the majority report expected to be released on Tuesday, the Republicans issued their own collection of fairy tales late Monday afternoon. As you might have expected, the Republican report represents an El Caudillo del Mar-a-Lago fanzine unlike any other. From CBS News:



"The Democrats' impeachment inquiry is not the organic outgrowth of serious misconduct; it is an orchestrated campaign to upend our political system," it says. "The Democrats are trying to impeach a duly elected President based on the accusations and assumptions of unelected bureaucrats who disagreed with President Trump's policy initiatives and processes.”



Here, for example, are the further adventures of the president* as international crime-buster.



"The evidence shows that President Trump holds a deepseated, genuine, and reasonable skepticism of Ukraine due to its history of pervasive corruption," the report says. "Understood in this proper context, the President's initial hesitation to meet with President Zelensky or to provide U.S. taxpayer-funded security assistance to Ukraine without thoughtful review is entirely prudent.”



And off to the zoo, we go.



"Publicly available — and irrefutable — evidence shows how senior Ukrainian government officials sought to influence the 2016 U.S. presidential election in opposition to President Trump's candidacy, and that some in the Ukrainian embassy in Washington worked with a Democrat operative to achieve that goal," it continues. "While Democrats reflexively dismiss these truths as conspiracy theories, the facts are indisputable and bear heavily on the Democrats' impeachment inquiry.”

They got nothing. But they can put on a show. And they will.

Respond to this post on the Esquire Politics Facebook page here.

Charles P. Pierce Charles P Pierce is the author of four books, most recently Idiot America, and has been a working journalist since 1976.

This content is created and maintained by a third party, and imported onto this page to help users provide their email addresses. You may be able to find more information about this and similar content at piano.io