GOP’s lame impeachment secret: A story of manipulation

[DonViejo]

Republican politicians are terrified of right-wing lunatics. Here's what's really behind the dumb impeachment fever

BY JONATHAN BERNSTEIN

It’s becoming a ritual of the congressional recess for Republicans: At town halls, and other venues, frustrated (or angry, or hopeful) conservatives ask them about the impeachment of Barack Obama.

And Republican politicians … well, their strategy (as Joan Walsh details in a nice item summing up these episodes) is all over the place. So we have Ted Cruz calling it a “good question” but noting that there just aren’t the votes in the Senate to convict; one member of the House saying that the votes are there in the House, but not in the Senate; another saying it would be a “dream come true” but that they just needed the “evidence”; and Sen. Tom Coburn saying that Obama is “perilously close” to impeachment.

Well, the answers are all over the place in one sense, but in another they are all actually pretty similar: None of them dismissed the idea out of hand. None of them simply said that impeachment is an extreme remedy for only the most serious malfeasance in office, and as wrong as they believe Barack Obama has been on matters of public policy, and as bad a president as they believe he has been, there’s absolutely nothing out there remotely in the neighborhood of an impeachable offense.

That’s what any responsible elected official would do.

But the second thing all these answers appear to have in common is actually even more astonishing and irresponsible: None of these politicians seem to feel any need to actually discuss the grounds for impeachment. At best there’s some hand-waving around the minor scandals of the last year, but for the most part it’s just assumed that impeachment is what Republicans normally do to Democratic presidents, just because.

full article
http://www.salon.com/2013/08/24/how_to_manipulate_a_republican/

[OmahaBlueDog]

1. FAUX has convinced their viewers that Benghazi is the worst scandal in American history

..so their Teabagger viewers pound the tables demanding that something be done. So their weak minded elected officials say they'd like to give them what they want, but they can't. But maybe if you all show up in droves, we can get him out in 2015......

In the article, I semi-agree with this statement:

The conclusions? Bill Clinton wasn’t impeached over sex (what Democrats believe) or over perjury (what Republicans claim); he was impeached because he was a Democrat in the White House. That’s enough.

I think the "just a Democrat" is a big part of it, but I think just as big was that they'd spent 4 years and millions of dollars trying to dig something -- anything -- up on Whitewater, and had nothing.

[JohnnyRingo]

3. True that.

There were some crazy conspiracies thrown at the Clinton White House, including the absurd "Troopergate", and Barstool Republicans believed every one of them. Then, just like now, nothing came of even one.

One would think the Republican faithful would wonder why these scandals come & go in an endless cycle, but instead they just seem to assume the president squirms his way out of them through brute power. They even gave Clinton the nickname "Slick Willy" because of his ability to shed serious accusations, including the outright murder of Vince Foster.

I have one conservative friend who to this very day swears Obama and Holder are going to jail for "Fast & Furious" soon.

[Bernardo de La Paz]

4. 4488 Americans dead in Iraq since Bush's fraudulent war began. Over 32,000 wounded.

That's a scandal.

[Cryptoad]

2. How funny

,,,and the graybeard of GOP are sitting around scratching their asses wondering why all the good and decent people are leaving the Republican Party in droves!

[BlueDemKev]

9. Oh, because Rethugs aren't conservative ENOUGH!

Don't you know these things?

[chuckstevens]

5. Echoing Some Thoughts of Another DU Member...

If the Republican House proceeds with an attempted impeachment of President Obama, the move will cause the death of the Republican Party! 35% of the crazies and racists in this nation would support it, but to 65% of the rational people it would be viewed as the vindictive, bull shit, political ploy that it would be.

The GOP impeached a popular president in Bill Clinton over a blow job, said nothing about the Republican President George Bush and VP Dick Cheney, who deliberately lied this nation into a war that killed 100,00 +, and then after obstructing EVERYTHING President Obama has tried to do, under this scenario, would desperately try to impeach the man over "something", "anything." The Republicans would go the way of the Federalists and Whig Parties if they try it.

[davidpdx]

6. It's about trying to win the Senate next year

They are doing a "well we can't do it because of the Senate *wink wink*" which makes it even more political than when they put Clinton though that crap in the late 90's.

[Mc Mike]

7. +1, thanks for posting, DV.

A tangential piece of trivia that I'd like to point out: at the end of December of '08, I did 2 searches on yahoo, one phrase 'impeach bush' and the other 'impeach obama'. After 8 years of doing all wrong and no right (even by accident) there were 17.5 million hits for impeach bush. But at -.25 years in office, as just the president elect, 'impeach obama' yielded 35 million results.

Their people truly deserve impeachment, and our side forbears. The repugs running congress did nothing to hold the crooked malfeasant bush administration to account. Our administrations deserve to have the repugs shut up and get the hell out of the way, so we can fix the mess the repugs created, so naturally the repugs discover their sense of outrage and need for checks-and-balances oversight. They didn't think bush should answer for anything, when he clearly belongs in jail, but now they're trying to figure out some reason to use that nifty impeachment tool.

Treasonously sore losers, they are.

[BlueDemKev]

8. They can't accept they LOST the election

They somehow believe that the Constitution prohibits a Democrat from being president.

They also can't understand HOW they keep losing elections. They're certain it's because if voter fraud and/or the Republican candidates aren't conservative enough!

What planet are these people from?