THREE-MINUTE UPDATE: Check the hell out of this ARG poll: Americans support censure 46%-44%. Closely divided? You bet. Opportunity for leadership? Absolutely. Also, Linc Chaffee won’t rule out censure. That ought to go over well with the Club for Growth. (chuckle)
I’m actually kind of serious: Today’s <a
href=”http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/16/politics/16impeach.html”>NY
Times story about their foaming, white-hot reaction to Feingold’s
censure proposal shows a sharp, opportunistic, aggressive political
culture. And they’re using the word impeachment — not censure,
as Feingold proposes, although there is an impeachment effort in the
House — to rally their troops, raise money, and maybe get folks to
come to the polls in November.
I just gotta say Bravo to those guys. That’s exactly the kind of
attitude we need on the Dems side. Everything is an opportunity, even
your own guy’s disgrace. If you constantly look for opportunties to go
on the offensive (“We’ll win because of X, Y and Z”), you’ll be on the
offensive a lot; if you think defensively (“Gosh, how do we win in
spite of A, B, and C”), you’ll end up on the defensive. Go figure.
That being said, George Lakoff (<a
href=”http://www.chelseagreen.com/2004/items/elephant”>Don’t Think of
an Elephant) may be smiling: Every time Paul Weyrich or Rush
Limbaugh says, “Democrats want to impeach Bush!”, the association is
made in folks’ minds, like a mantra … Bush … impeached … Bush
… impeached … And sooner or later the conversation turns to: “Should
Bush be impeached?” — or, to ratchet down, “Should Bush be merely censured?”
Either way, not good for the President or his toadies. “Framing” wins,
if the Dems decide to take it up.
And it may win without them, or in spite of them.
In any event, Dems should certainly take the risk of seeming
strong and principled — which <a
href=”http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/03/14/AR2006031401519.html”>Hillary
didn’t exactly demonstrate today, hilariously. (Via <a
href=”http://www.ghostinthemachine.net/003685.html#003685″>Ghost in
the Machine.) In the meantime, they all seem to be waiting … for
some phone calls, maybe? (202) 224-3121 is the switchboard.
Charley,
you have outdone yourself today. KagroX started planting the “impeachment” meme a while ago wanting us citizen activists just to float the word out there. The more it is in the air, the more people think about how incompetent W is along with the breaking the law and high crimes stuff. Now that Pew has measured the public in the word association game and incompetent comes out as the #1 word, the meme progresses. If the wingers keep it up, and keep floating the words out there, it is a win-win for us in the long run.
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Great observations on your part! It’s just what they would be doing given the opportunity.
Exactly…if Clinton (or Gore, or whoever was a Democrat in the White House) had started a war on flimsy (read: no) vetted intel, didn’t fund the military in the right places (read: protect the troops, not Halliburton’s bottom line) and had been on vacation, and stayed there, after getting a memo labelled “bin Laden Determined to Strike in the US” when a month later 9-11 happened, do you think Republicans wouldn’t have ALREADY impeached him?? Hell, I’d expect them to pass resolutions to put that Democrat in front of a firing squad.
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I am SOOOO disappointed in Barak Obama’s response. Tsk, tsk. Get your sea legs under you already, I know you are a rookie but there’s a vacuum of leadership here. We know you have a spine…so use it!
Making a decision that YOU don’t agree with is not a high crime or misdemeanor. Even if that decision was wrong – and I’m not prepared to concede that it was – it STILL isn’t a crime. Which is interesting, because a censure would perfectly appropriate, if you could get the votes.
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Clinton was impeached (oh, yes he was, he just wasn’t convicted, just like Andrew Johnson) for committing perjury. There is no disagreement about the facts – he is still stripped of his law license by the Arkansas Bar Assn. He was not impeached for his tawdry sex life, he wasn’t even impeached for lying on TV to the public – he was impeached for lying under oath.
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If Bush lied – when was it under oath? THIS is why your liberal lions are cowering in thier caves – they KNOW that a political misstatement is not perjury and there are no legal grounds to proceed with an impeachment. That is why Finegold’s motion will die a slow, twisting death on the Floor.
recently expired. Admittedly, it’s a minor point, but let’s keep our facts straight.
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What Bush did in the NSA spying scandal may not have been a crime, but it was illegal. Every lawyer who is not on the Bush payroll has arrived at that conclusion. Most have found the administration’s efforts to justify the NSA spying as within existing law to be laughable.