Cruz: Senate Democrats are Enabling Obama to Commit Impeachable Offenses Worse Than Nixon's
Palin: Let's Impeach Obama

So here's the obligatory post.

Recently, Pat Buchanan urged conservatives to stop talking up impeachment.

This is somewhat surprising, because in 2002, with reports of chaos at the border under George W. Bush (and that president similarly not doing much about it), Buchanan then suggested at least a trial balloon in the direction of impeachment.

Twice, Bush has taken an oath to "preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States." Article IV, Section 4 of that Constitution reads," The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government, and shall protect each of them against invasion."

Well, we are being invaded, and the president of the United States is not doing his duty to protect the states against that invasion.

Some courageous Republican, to get the attention of this White House, should drop into the hopper a bill of impeachment, charging Bush with a conscious refusal to uphold his oath and defend the states of the Union against "invasion."

It may be the only way left to get his attention, before the border vanishes and our beloved country dissolves into MexAmerica, what T.R. called a "polyglot boarding house for the world."

He doesn't favor such a youthful experimentation with impeachment as regards Obama, despite the fact that the 2002 "chaos at the border" couldn't hold a candle to the current crisis, and Obama has explicitly declared that he is changing the law per his whim.

Has the president unilaterally rewritten the Obamacare law, while ignoring the Congress that wrote it? Indeed, he has. But would a Republican Party that failed and folded when it tried to use its legitimate power of the purse to defund Obamacare really stand firm in an Antietam battle to impeach a president of the United States? Or is this just "beer talk"?

Impeachment is in the last analysis a political act.

The impeachment of Nixon was a coup d'etat by liberal enemies who had the institutional power to destroy his presidency. And, undeniably, he gave them the tools.

In the case of Nixon, political enemies controlled both houses of the Congress. Washington was a hostile city. Though he had swept 49 states, Nixon lost D.C. 3-to-1. The bureaucracy built up in the New Deal and Great Society was deep-dyed Democratic.

Most crucially, the Big Media whose liberal bias had been exposed by Nixon and Vice President Spiro Agnew were hell-bent on revenge. The bureaucracy, Congress and Big Media worked in harness to bring Nixon down.

No such powerful and hostile coalition exits today with Obama.

Any Republican attempt at impeachment would go up against a stacked deck.

Buchanan isn't as inconsistent here as it might at first seem. (Just on a lighthearted note, I'll say he's extremely consistent in his never-ending defense of Nixon.)

Buchanan favored at least a motion towards impeachment in Bush's case, but not in the much more egregious case of Obama. But this is because the deck is stacked against Republicans -- the media and permanent New Class that controls us would have been delighted with an impeachment gesture towards Bush, and would be aghast at such a thing directed at Obama.

The Republican Party is the weaker of the two political parties. It's not the case that we have more voters while the Democrats have the powerful opinion-shaping institutions -- no, the Democrats actually have both.

Republicans reach near parity on number of voters when you add in the ten to fifteen percent of the public which calls itself "independent" but tends to favor the Republicans when they actually vote. But you can't count on those voters, because they will (and do, in the case of Obama) often vote Democratic.

So it's not principle that distinguishes Bush and Obama regarding impeachment, but political reality.

And, as Buchanan says, impeachment is a political act.

I don't favor this impeachment talk because when Obama is on the ballot, Democrats win (their less-likely voters don't care about other politicians, but they are personally invested in Obama, his actual person), and when Obama is not on the ballot, Republicans win.

Speaking of impeachment effectively puts Obama on the ballot in November.

I don't wish him to be on the ballot.

If people want to impeach him after November, fine. But ratcheting up the talk of impeachment seems, to me, to invite an election which is higher in turnout among Obama's zealots. (It's a strange sort of zealotry that compels them to vote like their government checks depended on it every four years but then skip the midterms in between, but that's the strange situation we're in.)

Nevertheless, the issue is being broached constantly by the base, and now, obliquely, by Ted Cruz.

President Obama has succeeded in abusing his power more than Richard Nixon thanks to the support and enabling of Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid and his team who “roll over and acquiesce” to every White House whim, charged Texas Sen. Ted Cruz.

“Harry Reid right now is Barack Obama’s most important protector. Harry Reid shuts down the Senate, prevents any meaningful oversight, which means Harry Reid is the president’s enabler,” said the outspoken conservative and Reid’s foe.

“When the president ignores the law and ignores the Constitution, Harry Reid and Senate Democrats stand up and cheer and that is profoundly dangerous to our liberty,” said Cruz on the nationally syndicated and top-rated Mark Levin Show.

Allah wonders if Cruz is actually in favor of impeaching Obama, or is perhaps suggesting a "Compromise Impeachment" of, say, Eric Holder.

Sarah Palin is more certain.

President Obama's rewarding of lawlessness, including his own, is the foundational problem here. It's not going to get better, and in fact irreparable harm can be done in this lame-duck term as he continues to make up his own laws as he goes along, and, mark my words, will next meddle in the U.S. Court System with appointments that will forever change the basic interpretation of our Constitution's role in protecting our rights.

It’s time to impeach; and on behalf of American workers and legal immigrants of all backgrounds, we should vehemently oppose any politician on the left or right who would hesitate in voting for articles of impeachment.

Eh. We're going to have the same old debate over whether futile gestures are worthy and useful, if only to announce our principles, or whether they're just futile and ultimately more about personal satisfaction than about any sort of tangible effect on the world at large.

I'm not looking forward to that debate, as it's usually pretty heated and emotional, but I guess by now we're all such experienced hands at it that we can just reference our arguments and insults by shorthand, or even by a numerical code, like:

First Guy: Argument 16, followed by Insult 23.

Second Guy: Counter-Insult 4b, and then Argument 21, and then a parting shot of Insult 3.

First Guy: How dare you! You know I have a slow metabolism!

posted by Ace at 04:28 PM

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