What are crazy people going to do when Mitch McConnell is saying there'll be no more GOP-led government shutdowns?
"One of my favorite old Kentucky sayings is there's no education in the second kick of a mule. The first kick of a mule was when we shut the government down in the mid 1990s and the second kick was over the last 16 days," [McConnell] said. "There is no education in the second kick of a mule. There will not be a government shutdown.Well, there's always impeachment:
"I think we have fully now acquainted our new members with what a losing strategy that is," he added.
Rep. Steve Stockman (R-Texas) recently arranged for the delivery of an anti-Obama impeachment book to all 435 members of the U.S. House of Representatives.
The book, Impeachable Offenses: The Case for Removing Barack Obama from Office, by Aaron Klein and Brenda J. Elliott, is published by the conspiracy web site World Net Daily, which also reported on Rep. Stockman's helping hand....
Impeachable Offenses claims that President Obama has committed many violations of the U.S. Constitution that could qualify him for impeachment, such as delaying the implementation of Obamacare and granting waivers to some companies and Congressional staffs....
Here's the book trailer for Impeachable Offenses, which is like a video supercut of every right-wing email forward of the past five years (Benghazi! Fast and Furious! Gun control! Mexicans!:
And if you somehow have the idea that World Net Daily is much further to the right than Fox, please note that I found this book trailer at Fox Nation, where there's also a handy summary of the book's contents.
But they wouldn't try to impeach Obama with Democrats controlling the Senate (and thus preventing conviction), would they? Well, Democratic control of the Senate didn't stop them from shutting down the government in order to defund Obamacare, did it? And a futile impeachment attempt wouldn't rattle global financial markets! (It didn't in 1998, right?) So it's a genius plan!
Yes, I think the history of the shutdown, and the fact that the Crazy Caucus would clearly do it all over again despite the fact that it was an utter failure, strongly suggests that the crazies might go for impeachment next. And John Boehner probably will do nothing to stand in their way. And there'll be primary challenges for any doubters.
10 comments:
Most of the current batch of Republicans didn't get the chance to impeach Clinton, so it's only fair they get the chance to impeach Obama.
To true, Joe, too true.
I think we ought to just shoot every god-damned Retard out there.
No fear, only contempt.
Addendum: dog-gone it Steve, I feeling pretty mean today, pretty not nice. Can you unban Dennis for an hour or two so I can open up a can of whoop-ass?
I think they might plan to do it, but I don't think they'll manage it. These really are the gang that couldn't shoot straight. Their idea of strategy is like their idea of sex (probably)--they substitue enthusiasm for a plan every time.. Just like they thought they could demonstrate their power by voting to defund Obamacare 42 times and they only lesson they've learned is they should have held another symbolic vote. A bunch of them will keep nattering about impeaching Obama while Boehner and the other long term political actors will keep soothing them and giving them lollipops to keep them quiet. Because even if they don't know it Boehner and the others know that impeaching Obama will kick the presidency over to the Democrats for the forseeable future and will give every unregistered voter a reason to register and vote for a democratic house.
Because even if they don't know it Boehner and the others know that impeaching Obama will kick the presidency over to the Democrats for the forseeable future and will give every unregistered voter a reason to register and vote for a democratic house.
I'm not sure. Control of Congress stayed in the Republicans' hands in 1998 and 2000, and the 2000 presidential election was a photo finish despite peace and prosperity.
No one I know will vote for an incumbant next year.
No fear.
I don't think impeachment is in the cards. There's no doubt that the Tea Party Caucus dreams of impeaching the President with a white hot passion and would do it in a second if they had the option, but impeachment is such an absurd waste of time that the rest of the caucus won't enable them on this front. They were willing to enable the hostage taking (and I think they are still scared of the Tea Party), but with the Senate in Democratic control and no hostage, even the morons in the "non-crazy" part of the House Republicans won't want any part of that. Without them, impeachment is nothing. Many of the Republicans in the House who opposed the hostage-taking strategy nonetheless went along with it because of fear of primary challenges (I wonder if any of them that ended up voting for the Senate deal and are now called "traitors" wish that they had just ripped off that band-aid earlier).
The Clinton impeachment people could at least understand, even if they thought it was stupid; wasting the country's time on a doomed impeachment proceeding over arcane conspiracy theories about granting waivers would obviously leave most of the country scratching it's head and fed up with Republicans, even those who aren't fans of the President. If you really can't articulate a simple argument even for other Republicans why the President should be impeached, you're not going to build enough of an outcry to get the "old school" Republicans in line.
Finally, the last thing Republicans (at least those who haven't lost all their grey matter sniffing paint) want is something next year to drive Democratic turnout, especially on top of Republicans hitting their lowest approval ratings ever in some surveys. Unless the President gets caught in something juicy and easily explainable, we're not going to see any serious impeachment movement. If we do, I think this time the House really could flip.
"Finally, the last thing Republicans (at least those who haven't lost all their grey matter sniffing paint) want is something next year to drive Democratic turnout, especially on top of Republicans hitting their lowest approval ratings ever in some surveys."
surveyssdhays,
While I agree with most of what you wrote, that first part of last paragraph struck me as, possibly, off-note.
These Teabaggers are not exactly known to be forward-thinkers - witness everything since 10/1/13.
Or, 1/11, if you want to go back far enough.
In fact, it wouldn't surprise me to find out that they believe (not, "think," since that is beyond them) that it would do the opposite, and motivate people to come out and vote for them.
You could well be right.
Victor - You and I aren't disagreeing. The Tea Party is delusional and would definitely see impeachment as an opportunity to win all 465 seats in the House and sweep the Senate. But the old guard, while stupid and unethical and not particularly different ideologically from the Tea Party, still doesn't approach that level of delusion. In the shutdown and debt limit brinkmanship, there were two elements that played a big part in making the old guard cooperate:
1. It had worked before in 2011, so even if they had doubts about this time, deluding themselves that it still might work was easier.
2. The grassroots was foaming at the mouth over defunding Obamacare, so they were scared out of their (admittedly few) wits of a primary challenge.
For #1, if you can't convince yourself of any possibility of impeachment ending well for you or your party, you're going to want to short-circuit it as quickly as possible. Without even the delusion of the possibility of winning, the weight of losing the general election begins to balance out the fear of a primary challenge. This is basic politics, and we're talking about Republican politicians who are at least fairly good at that, not the whack-a-loons in the Tea Party.
For #2, the Tea Part grassroots is led around by the nose by its financiers like the Kochs. As you've pointed out, the Tea Party isn't particularly bright. If the Kochs want to gin up impeachment, they'll need a simple and powerful narrative to really get it going; not implementing section such-and-such of the ACA correctly doesn't cut it. Benghazi might have if it hadn't been for the baffling decision to focus on the Administration's early public statements rather than what actually happened (they really didn't care that our Ambassador and other foreign service members were killed, only how it characterized). NSA spying might work, but the Tea Party doesn't really have a problem with the spying, just that Obama is President. Impeachment without a compelling excuse will simply confuse everyone, including the Tea Party grassroots, and if they're confused, they won't be putting any real pressure on the old guard. Now, maybe I'm not giving the Kochs enough credit for inventiveness, but I just don't see a compelling narrative based on what they have right now.
The Tea Party may indeed try to impeach the President; I just expect that the rest of the Republicans will cut them off their knees.
Agreed!
My only point was, I wouldn't be surprised if the House started impeachment hearings, knowing full well that the Senate won't go along.
As evidence, I present the 40+ times the House imbeciles keep trying to repeal Obamacare - and THEN, tried shutting down the government, and going past the debt ceiling.
Sure, whatever not clinically insane old guard will stop them, but that doesn't mean that they won't try.
After all, they've got to do something to placate the rubes in their districts!
All they came back home with after this fight, was their asses in their own hands.
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