By David Kamioner | December 9, 2019

We’ve come to another day of the circus — and they’ve just pulled down the big top.

So who were the lion tamers and who were the clowns at the House Judiciary Committee’s hearings on the Democrats’ partisan impeachment push against President Donald Trump?

Who won and who lost?

Wonder no more.

Related: GOP Reveals the Dems’ Anti-Trump Impeachment Push for What It Is: Nakedly Political

Here’s the list:

Winners
1.) Rep. Doug Collins (R-Ga.). Nobody won on Monday like Collins. His masterful cross-examination of Democrat counsel Daniel Goldman had the attorney squirming in his seat and looking visibly depressed.

Throughout the day, Collins scored with tough lines that called the release of private phone records “a drive by” and by referring to the odd practice of making Dem counsel Barry Berke a witness one minute and a questioner the next “staff on staff” questioning.

Collins hit the Bidens with a one-two punch on former Vice President Joe Biden and his son Hunter that’s sure to leave a nasty bruise — and mocked Dem cowardice by asking, “Where’s Adam?” That’s a reference, of course, to the absent House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff (D-Calif.). Schiff failed to show for testimony on his own report.

Related: GOP’s Collins Rips Dem Counsel Daniel Goldman at Impeachment Hearings

In his closing statement, Collins called the Judiciary Committee itself a “farce” and “a rubber stamp” for Dem partisan goals.

Because of his fighting tone on Monday, Collins’ prospects for the 2022 Georgia U.S. Senate seat just shot up.

2.) Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.). As he’s been during the hearing process and in media appearances across the board, Gaetz showed himself again to be a staunch defender of the president and a slayer of Democrat arguments.

When gaveled down by House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerry Nadler (D-N.Y.) on Monday, Gaetz refused to concede — and he got his points out. He amplified the “Where’s Adam?” theme when he told Goldman, “We want Schiff in the chair! Not you!”

Gaetz also made public the highly partisan background of both Dem counsels Barry Berke and Daniel Goldman when he revealed that Berke had given over $100,000 to various Democrats running for office, while Goldman has given tens of thousands of dollars to Dems as well.

This will make Gaetz even less popular with the Left than usual. But it will put him in fine shape with the White House, the GOP, and the likely majority of the American people.

3.) GOP Counsel Steve Castor. Castor held up well when faced with badgering by Dem committee members; and his everyday American image contrasted nicely with Democrat Barry Berke’s slick D.C. attorney demeanor and performance.

Castor scored consistently in argument and in rebuttal. He was a valuable GOP player on Monday, as he was in the earlier rounds of hearings as well.

4.) Rep. Tom McClintock (R-Calif.). When it was McClintock’s turn to question the witnesses and comment, he delivered a historical and cultural tour de force, comparing “Democrats in 1860” — who refused to accept the election of Abraham Lincoln to the presidency, thus sparking the Civil War — to “Democrats in 2019,” who have been creating modern national turmoil.

He quoted Lewis Carroll’s Red Queen in “Alice in Wonderland,” likening her diktats to the Democrats’ push for Trump’s impeachment that requires “sentence first, verdict afterward.” McClintock’s hard-hitting verbal assault termed the Democrat arguments the “legal doctrines of despots.” His work was superb.

Oh, and by the way, Democrat lawyer Barry Berke gets an honorable mention of sorts — but only because he had the sense to disappear rather than face GOP questioning.

Poor Daniel Goldman was not given that chance — and paid the price.

Related: Lindsey Graham: ‘An Anonymous Person’ Should Not Be Able to Start ‘Impeachment Proceedings Against the President’

Speaking of which …

Losers
1.) Democrat Counsel Daniel Goldman. He played the patsy for Adam Schiff and badly endured the fallout. His arguments were loose, his reasoning comically flawed, and his delivery stilted and petulant.

He folded quickly under questioning and mostly sat there for the day looking as if he’d rather be anywhere else than in front of the House Judiciary Committee.

When Goldman tried a couple of times to get argumentative, GOP members rhetorically slapped him down; they were clearly tired of his meandering obfuscations.

While his act may play well with some denizens of the hardest Left, any other observers, including his own partisans, must feel — and they do a lot of that, you know, feeling — his performance was nowhere near close to par.

2.) Chairman Jerry Nadler (D-N.Y.) and fellow Democrat committee members. They did not do well against the GOP forces that reduced their arguments to almost nothing — and fared worse against a Republican parliamentary hit-and-run game that had the Dems flummoxed from the start of Monday’s hearing.

Related: Nadler Nodded Off During His Own Hearings

Nadler and his hapless band careened from inarticulate wording to barely coherent charges as they grew increasingly frustrated at their inability to score points against the GOP’s counsel, Steve Castor, and the GOP members of the House Judiciary Committee.

Monday’s hearing will probably drive the polling numbers further south for the Dems.

They will use the Horowitz Report and some of its findings to try to arrest their decline — but it will only work to a degree.

And they await a worse result in the Senate.

LifeZette will be there every step of the way. Stay tuned.

This piece originally appeared in LifeZette and is used by permission.

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