Impeachment Threat Is Real (HAZMAT-3 alert)

Former Republican Congressman Joe Scarborough had me on his MSNBC show Monday night to talk about impeachment.

It was smart, civil discussion that treated the prospect of impeaching the president as a serious matter.

Scarborough took the lead in suggesting that Bush's biggest problem might be that Republicans in the House and Senate who — fearful of the threat Bush poses to their political survival — do not appear to be rallying 'round the president. The host's sentiments were echoed by two other guests, columnist Mike Barnicle and Salon's Joan Walsh.

The impetus for the show was Nebraska Sen. Chuck Hagel's ongoing discussion of the impeachment prospect — Hagel's not quite a supporter of sanctioning Bush, more a speculator about the prospect — and a new column by Robert Novak that suggests Bush has dwindling support within the congressional wing of the GOP.

Speaking about impeachment on ABC's "This Week," Hagel said, "Any president who says 'I don't care' or 'I will not respond to what the people of this country are saying about Iraq or anything else' or 'I don't care what the Congress does, I am going to proceed' — if a president really believes that, then there (are) ways to deal with that."

Novak wrote "The I-word (incompetence) is used by Republicans in describing the Bush administration generally. Several of them I talked to described a trifecta of incompetence: the Walter Reed hospital scandal, the FBI's misuse of the Patriot Act and the U.S. attorneys firing fiasco. 'We always have claimed that we were the party of better management,' one House leader told me. 'How can we claim that anymore?'"

Scarborough drew the two statements together for the purpose of asking whether Bush could count on Republicans to block moves by Congressional Democrats to hold Bush to account for high crimes and misdemeanors.

When a conservative commentator who was on the frontlines of Newt Gingrich's "Republican revolution" entertains a thoughtful conversation about the politics and processes of impeachment on a major cable news network, it should be clear that the cloistered conversation about sanctioning this president has begun to open up.

He is simply treating the prospect seriously, as did CNN's Wolf Blitzer earlier in the day.

What I told Scarborough is what I have been saying in public forums for the past several weeks: We are nearing an impeachment moment. The Alberto Gonzales scandal, the under-covered but very real controversy involving abuses of the Patriot Act and the president's increasingly belligerent refusals to treat Congress as a co-equal branch of government are putting the discussion of presidential accountability onto the table from which House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has tried to remove it.

Does this mean Bush and Cheney will be impeached? That, of course, will be decided by the people. Impeachment at its best is always an organic process; it needs popular support or it fizzles — as with the attempt by House Republican leaders to remove former President Clinton in a process that, fairly or not, seemed to be all about blue dresses.

While the people saved Clinton — by signaling to their representatives that they opposed sanctioning a president's personal morals — it does not appear that they are inclined to protect Bush.

With each new revelation about what Gonzales did at the behest of the Bush White House to politicize prosecutions by U.S. Attorneys, the revulsion with the way this president has disregarded the Constitution and the rule of law becomes more intense. And citizens are not cutting their president much slack.

A new USA Today/Gallup Poll — conducted over the weekend — shows that, by close to a 3-to-1 margin, Americans want Congress to issue subpoenas to force White House officials to testify in the Gonzales case. Sixty-eight percent of those surveyed say the president should drop his claim of executive privilege in this matter, while only 26 percent agree with the reasoning Bush has used to try and block a meaningful inquiry.

If the president wants to get in a fight with Congress over how to read the Constitution, it appears that the people will back Congress. And that backing is what will begin to restore the backbones of House members who, despite Pelosi's attempts to quiet talk of impeachment, are getting more and more intrigued by the prospect of holding this president to account.

As Hagel says, "This is not a monarchy. There are ways to deal with (executive excess). And I would hope the president understands that."

And now some thoughtful analysis from our friends on the Left, many of whom believe that a push to impeach Bush will come from the Republicans themselves...

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He's gone. It is just a matter of time for our favorite villan, I haven't seen poll numbers on him for a while but I would say they considerably lower than the 18% we heard last year. Once Plame bursts into flame, it's just a matter of time.

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Hey, guys, one of the most recent times I called Henry Waxman's office, locally, I got the MOST intriguing response. The young staffer answered my call and was, shall we say, rawther receptive. I said that I deeply appreciated ALL his investigative efforts at the moment, the tough questions, the smackdowns that shut up whiny republi-CON sore-losermen on his committee, and the subject matter he's exploring. She thanked me for the support.

Then, I said I wanted Waxman to keep it up, and build a case for IMPEACHMENT. She replied "that's what we're trying to do."

I think we're reaching the "Goldwater Moment" - wherein there will be a handful of loyal Republicans, NOT "loyal bushies", who go to the White House to tell bush he's going to have to go for the good of the party and the country. AND for the party. And did I say they'd tell him it'd be for the sake of his party? They're realizing that they have WAY more to lose than he does, because one way or another, he'll be gone soon, but they, on the other hand, will want to keep their jobs and to stick around. He's proving to them conclusively, now, that he doesn't give a rat's ass about them. It's himself and his big-ass phony swaggering Texas strut and his male ego that he cares most about. He won't even admit he's made a mistake! And he's made THOUSANDS of mistakes. Any wonder he took THREE TEXAS OIL COMPANIES straight into bankruptcy when his rich backer/buddies gave him a chance in business? The GOP is gonna start talking, quietly, among themselves, that maybe the Goldwater Moment time is coming and they're going to need to figure out who gets that miserable job of breaking it to bush, and cheney too, and how everyone else saves face. And most important, how they can possibly salvage an even nominally-respectable showing next November. I wouldn't be surprised if they're talking about it, already.

The fact that they decided not to put up a fight in the Senate today is very telling. They ARE reading the poll numbers. This tells you they are getting DELUGED with emails and faxes and phone calls and letters and petitions from EVERYWHERE, telling them to get us OUT of Iraq. If they thought the people were with them, they'd be blocking this for all they're worth. Evidently they're realizing the people are NOT with them. This piece from The Nation is really significant. I think it's absolutely spot-on.

Keep visualizing...

We may get this arrogant, pig-headed *******held accountable yet.

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We can't remove him without the pug's going along with it - 67 votes in the senate OTOH, it is happening faster than I thought it would.

Piss off a bunch of career Republican prosecutors and this is what you get: a very well documented bi-partisan outcry about a very Republican scandal.

That may be what is driving the republicans toward impeachment. The sight of career Republican civil servants being driven from their jobs for Bush's cronyism and corruption is ugly and shows how little he cares even for members of his own party.

Maybe the Republican party has found it's bottom.

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Etc. etc.

Several of them I talked to described a trifecta of incompetence: the Walter Reed hospital scandal, the FBI's misuse of the Patriot Act and the U.S. attorneys firing fiasco.

Not one of these is grounds for impeachement.

Walter Reed - The entire VA system has had problems since the end of Vietnam, maybe even before.

FBI Patriot Act - How many Dem's voted for it? How many voted for it without reading it? If individual field offices were misusing it then those agents or SAIC's need to be fired. If it goes up to the director, then he needs to be canned. The President doesn't deal with individual actions of agents in the field.

Attourney Firings - NON ISSUE. Tell me the law that was broken. Oh wait there isn't one. There is NO CRIME here. Clinton fired how many? 92, all but one. Bush fired 80-some-odd when he came into office. This is nothing but a show put on by the Dems and a purgery trap, just like Scooter. No crime was commited there until Scooter was trapped into purgery, without the illegal investigation the purgery would never have happened.

You bring a real reason for impeachment and I'll be for it, but impeaching because your a whiny crybaby is going to get us all in trouble, not just President Bush.

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