Tag Archives: impeachment

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Now it might be Clinton vs. Bush 2.0

Get ready for another Clinton-Bush slugfest for the White House.

Or … maybe not.

Jeb Bush, the former governor of Florida and brother and son of two former presidents, has emerged as the Republican candidate of the moment. The Clinton in this matchup is Hillary Rodham Clinton, the wife of the former president sandwiched between the Bushes as well as a former U.S. senator and secretary of state.

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2014/03/jeb_bush_2016_presidential_run_why_it_would_be_hard_on_the_gop.html

Ask yourself: Is the nation really up for a presidential campaign featuring these two political heirs?

I’m not yet convinced.

Clinton likely is going to run for the presidency. The smart money says she’s a sure-fire lock for the Democratic nomination, Vice President Joe Biden’s interest notwithstanding.

As for Bush, well, the GOP’s establishment candidate du jour once was New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie — before he got caught up in that bridge lane-closing matter. The lane-closing calamity well might blow over eventually. Christie’s brand as a hands-on, no-nonsense administrator may be damaged beyond repair — and that’s if he escapes the hounds looking for some culpability in the lane-closure or in its aftermath. If he’s dirty, he’s toast.

The GOP has a number of tea party types jockeying for our attention: Marco Rubio, Scott Walker, Rand Paul, Ted Cruz, John Kasich and Bobby Jindal all are among the tea party favorites being bandied about.

Jeb’s mother, the always-candid Barbara, once said she hoped her son wouldn’t run. The country is “tired” of the Bush name in politics, Mama Bush said famously.

And as John Dickerson notes in the link attached to this blog, the Bush brand itself might be poison to many elements within the Republican Party. Do you ever hear any of the supposedly potential candidates for 2016 sing George W.’s praises, calling for a return to the good old days of warfare and cataclysmic recession? What’s more, the right wing never will forgive George H.W.’s decision to renege on his “read my lips, no new taxes” pledge that in reality was the smart thing to do.

As for Clinton, she brings her own baggage. After all, she is married to the second president ever impeached and as irrelevant as that sordid saga is to her own public service record, the Republicans are sure to remind us that electing Hillary means Bill returns to the White House, where he did those naughty things with that young intern.

Just think: The next presidential election is still more than two years out. We’ve got plenty of time to get sick of it all.

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Banish non-scientific ‘polls’

I detest those instant “polls” that seek — ostensibly, at least — to gauge public opinion on contemporary issues.

The Amarillo Globe-News today posted one such “poll” question on one of its opinion pages. It asks readers whether they agree with Texas Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst’s view that the House of Representatives should impeach President Obama.

OK. Let’s see. The Texas Panhandle in two presidential elections has given the president about 20 percent of the vote. Eighty percent of the vote went for Republicans John McCain in 2008 and Mitt Romney in 2012. The tea party wing of the GOP — the party’s most strident voice at the moment — is entrenched firmly in this part of an extremely Republican state.

I’ll take a wild guess that when the results of this “poll” are tabulated, we’ll get roughly a 90 percent approval rating for Dewhurst’s call for a presidential impeachment.

This is just one example. The media do this kind of thing all the time. They ask for immediate responses to pressing national issues. TV networks do it. The one that just slays me comes from a liberal TV talk show host, Ed Shultz, whose MSNBC program “The Ed Show” asks viewers to send in their answers to questions relating to the topic of the evening.

A question might go something like this: Do you agree that the Republican Party is looking after the best interest of rich people while ignoring the needs of poor folks? The answers usually come back about 95 to 5 percent “yes.”

OK, I embellished that question … but not by very much.

These “polls” merely feed into people’s anger, their frustration and they serve no useful purpose other than to gin up responses on websites.

They provide not a bit of useful information.

I just wish the media would stop playing these games.

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What has happened to David Dewhurst?

Texas Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst has been bitten by the critter that has infested a growing segment of the Republican Party.

He wants Congress to impeach President Obama. Imagine that: A Texas Republican running for re-election to a powerful statewide office has weighed in with the call for a presidential impeachment.

http://www.texasobserver.org/david-dewhurst-calls-obamas-impeachment/

This is not the man whom Texans have elected several times to statewide office. Something has happened to him.

Oh, I forgot. He lost a U.S. Senate race last year after being considered the prohibitive favorite; he got outflanked on his right by Ted Cruz and more than likely vowed never to let that happen again.

Therefore, he’s now calling for the president’s impeachment.

On what grounds? He says Obama has exerted executive authority that go beyond the Constitution. He mentioned something about the Sept. 11, 2011 attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya, that the White House knew from the moment the fire fight began that our officials needed help immediately, but failed to respond.

I used to think of David Dewhurst as a public official with an unparalleled work ethic. No one outworked this guy. He possesses an outstanding command of legislative detail. I thought that trait served him well as the Texas Senate’s presiding officer.

Now the climate has changed. Tea party activists have taken command of the stage. They’re hogging the spotlight. They are out for political blood. Dewhurst, once thought to be an “establishment Republican,” is now sounding as ferocious as his nemeses on the right.

Perhaps the most astounding aspect of his impeachment call is that, as he told The Texas Observer, he was speaking as a “private citizen.”

Listen up, Gov. Dewhurst: You are not a private citizen.

Something has happened to a once-serious public servant. I’m worried about him — and about the state he has been elected to lead.

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GOP sets new impeachment standard

I have concluded something sad about today’s Republican Party: It has reset the standard for impeaching the president of the United States.

Some GOP members of Congress are so intent on impeaching President Obama that at least one of them admits to having dreams about it. For what reason? What precisely are the “high crimes and misdemeanors” the president committed that warrant such a drastic act? They aren’t saying.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/25/us/politics/ignoring-qualms-some-republicans-nurture-dreams-of-impeaching-obama.html?ref=politics&_r=0

Suffice to say that it appears — to me, at least — that Republicans, led by the tea party wing of their party, have decided impeachment is one way to get rid of a guy they dislike, whose policies they detest.

It has gotten me to thinking about whether this new standard would have come into play during previous recent administrations. Was it plausible, therefore, to impeach:

* President Ford, for issuing a summary pardon to his predecessor, Richard Nixon, for any crimes he might have committed against the nation?

* President Carter, on whose watch the Iranian hostage rescue mission went so horribly wrong, causing the president and his national security team tremendous heartache?

* President Reagan, who misled the nation during the Iran-Contra crisis, which resulted in arms sales to the Contras in Central America while negotiations were underway with the rogue Iranian government that was holding seven American hostages?

* President George H.W. Bush, who promised never to raise taxes as long as he was president, and who then reneged on that solemn pledge?

* President George W. Bush, whose national security team — along with much of the rest of the world — sold Americans a bill of goods that Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein had a huge cache of chemical weapons? Turns out, after we invaded Iraq in March 2003, there were no such weapons — anywhere.

The answer to all of those, of course, is “no.”

You’ll notice, naturally, that I didn’t include President Clinton in that roster of past leaders. The House did impeach Clinton … for having an affair with a White House intern and then lying to a federal grand jury about it. In my view, the GOP set a pretty low standard for impeachment then as well. The Senate then tried Clinton, but acquitted him.

Are we heading back down that path now, with Republicans simply drooling over the possibility of impeaching a president?

They’re going to have to come up with a whole lot more than they’ve presented to date as reasons to do such a thing. And to date, they’ve produced nothing.

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Impeachment is near? He must be delusional

What in the name of all that is holy is U.S. Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., talking about?

Coburn said this week that the U.S. House of Representatives may be close to impeaching President Obama. The president’s policies, said Coburn, have moved him close to the legal requirements needed for impeachment.

http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2013/08/22/coburn-obama-a-friend-but-his-actions-nearing-grounds-for-impeachment/

As has been the case with some of the lunacy spouted by Republican members of Congress on this subject, Coburn offered no specific allegation — let alone evidence — of any “high crimes and misdemeanors” that the Obama administration has committed.

Perhaps just as strange as the impeachment talk has become is the source of the latest mutterings, from Tom Coburn, who calls himself a “personal friend” of the president. Indeed, I recall learning once that when Barack Obama entered the Senate in 2005, the grizzled veteran of the place — Sen. Coburn — took him under his wing and showed him the ropes.

Now this kind of talk?

Impeachment never — not ever — should become a political blood sport. And yet the open talk of this activity is emanating from the fruitcake wing of the Republican majority in the House of Reps. One GOP lawmaker, Kerry Bentivolio of Michigan, recently declared that a House vote to impeach the president of the United States would be a “dream come true.”

What utter crap.

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Stupidity alive and well in U.S. House

U.S. Rep. Kerry Bentivolio, R-Mich., is saying some remarkably stupid things.

The brand new congressman — elected in 2012 in a special election — said he’s asked lawyers “how can I impeach the president.”

http://www.politico.com/story/2013/08/kerry-bentivolio-president-obama-impeachment-95739.html?ml=la

Bentivolio told a town hall gathering of local Republicans that the president has committed an unspecified crime likely related to the IRS controversy or the Benghazi tragedy. He’s not laying out any specifics, but says he wants badly to impeach President Obama.

This kind of idiocy from lawmakers elected with an agenda that has nothing to do with helping their constituents makes me sick. I used to think serving in Congress was an honorable calling. Some folks still see it that way — and I include members of both parties in that category.

Lately, though, we’re moronic statements from the likes of Kerry Bentivolio — and let me throw in comments made recently by Republican U.S. Reps. Steve Stockman and Blake Farenthold of good ol’ Texas — who are tossing the “I-word” out as an applause line in front of their fervently faithful followers.

These clowns are a disgrace to an institution that can ill-afford this kind of ridicule.

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Partisanship enters debate over crime

I got into an interesting rhetorical tug-of-war with a friend of mine this week.

It involved the sentencing of former U.S. Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr. to 30 months in federal prison; Jackson’s wife got a one-year sentence in Club Fed. Jesse Jackson’s crime involved the theft of $750,000 from his campaign treasure chest.

My friend, a businessman in Amarillo — and a dedicated Republican — wanted to know if Democrats were still “proud” of their party now that one of their own had been sent up the proverbial river for committing a crime. I responded that the Republican Party has had its share of crooks; I cited former President Richard Nixon and former Vice President Spiro Agnew as examples. We went back and forth after that, but didn’t really settle anything.

He’s still an ardent Republican and I’m still an equally ardent Democrat. I believe we’re still friends; I’ll likely find out next time I visit his business establishment.

But the exchange brought to mind the cheapening of what’s happened to Jackson and other political leaders of either stripe — Democrat or Republican. It pains me when partisans try to hang the “all Democrats/Republicans are crooks” label on either party when someone gets convicted and sentenced for committing a crime.

I don’t give a damn about Jackson’s party affiliation, any more than I gave a damn that Nixon and Agnew were Republicans. Jackson was tried and convicted by the federal court. Nixon was nearly impeached by the House of Representatives and he quit to avoid a certain impeachment and conviction by the Senate; Agnew resigned after being indicted by the feds for taking bribes.

The system in all those cases worked irrespective of the political labels any of the principals wore at the time, and it usually works whenever any high-profile politician gets in trouble.

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Ex-GOP boss right about impeachment talk

Michael Steele offers living, breathing proof that the Republican Party hasn’t been overrun completely by those with lunatic notions.

Republicans who are full of all those crazy ideas, though, are hogging the platform.

Steele, the former Republican National Committee chairman, told MSNBC that talk of impeaching President Obama is “asinine.” You got it that right.

http://www.politico.com/story/2013/08/michael-steele-blake-farenthold-impeachment-95520.html?hp=r6

The latest impeachment talk came from, yep, another Texas Republican member of Congress. The goofball this time is Blake Farenthold, who told a small group of fans and supporters that the House of Representatives could impeach the president, but that he wouldn’t be convicted in a Senate trial.

Farenthold doesn’t specify on what charge the House would impeach the president. Why? Because nothing exists. He seems to be among those on the far right who dislike the president’s policies so much that they want to throw him out of office.

What an utter crock.

My hope is that Michael Steele and other reasonable Republicans can outshout the loons within his party. Clear your throat, Mr. Chairman.