Gingrich: Obama Has Created Constitutional Crisis With DOMA Posture, And Could Face Impeachment

Eh. It's all kind of play-for-the-base-ish.

“Imagine that Governor Palin had become president. Imagine that she had announced that Roe versus Wade in her view was unconstitutional and therefore the United States government would no longer protect anyone’s right to have an abortion because she personally had decided it should be changed. The news media would have gone crazy. The New York Times would have demanded her impeachment.”

Gingrich’s comments mark the first time a significant Republican leader has raised the specter of impeachment against Obama.

“First of all, he campaigned in favor of [the law]. He is breaking his word to the American people,” Gingrich says.

“Second, he swore an oath on the Bible to become president that he would uphold the Constitution and enforce the laws of the United States. He is not a one-person Supreme Court. The idea that we now have the rule of Obama instead of the rule of law should frighten everybody.

“The fact that the left likes the policy is allowing them to ignore the fact that this is a very unconstitutional act,” Gingrich said.

Gingrich said it is too early to call for Obama’s impeachment, but did not rule it out if he fails to comply with Congress and the constitutional process.

“I believe the House Republicans next week should pass a resolution instructing the president to enforce the law and to obey his own constitutional oath, and they should say if he fails to do so that they will zero out [defund] the office of attorney general and take other steps as necessary until the president agrees to do his job.

“His job is to enforce the rule of law and for us to start replacing the rule of law with the rule of Obama is a very dangerous precedent."

To me this just seems to be attention-grabbing for the sake of political posture. To overcome Obama's position, vote Obama out of office -- but I don't think that cause is particularly advanced here.

My Problem... is that this misreads the electorate, I think. It's not 1995.

I think the public wants tangible, realistic solutions. I feel that Gingrich here is talking like he's a blogger, offering up a whole raft of tough-guy posturings we know to a moral certainty will never actually happen.

This to me makes him seem like a politician to me, playing for applause, looking for advantage, and not at all like what I'm imagining a successful challenger to Obama will look like.

I think a successful candidate will be a politician adept enough to know he has to pretend to not be a politician and is ready to have a "grown up" talk with the public. Not someone who seems to be offering partisan-pleasing bluster.

posted by Ace at 04:48 PM

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